Kerri Walsh Jennings makes her last Olympic stand on beach volleyball’s home turf

The first unofficial world championships of beach volleyball were held on a beach in Rio in 1987, and almost 20 years later, the sport has come home. We’ll probably never get an Olympic basketball tournament held at a Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA or an Olympic medal in hockey awarded on a Minnesota pond, but we will get to a have champion crowned on Copacabana Beach, the place where beach volleyball was meant to be played.

It’ll be a party, especially since Brazil currently completely dominates the beach volleyball world. The Olympic hosts boast the top-ranked men’s team in the world, a pairing of Bruno Oscar Schmidt and Alison Cerutt; the top-ranked women’s team in the world, Talita Antunes and Larissa França, as well as the second-ranked women’s team in the world, Barbara Seixas and Agatha Bednarczuk.

Brazil swept the women’s podium at the World Championships last year and they could probably do it again at the Olympics, but countries are only allowed to send their two best teams to the games. Brazil can and should win gold, and if they do, the party on the beach in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain will be lit.

Meanwhile, Team USA is the sport’s old guard: At one point in time, Kerri Walsh Jennings and Phil Dalhausser have each been on the best team in the world, as Walsh Jennings has won gold at the last three Olympics and Dalhausser topped the podium in Beijing. But she’s 37 years old and he’s 36, and their respective longtime partners have each taken steps back. Now both are hoping to prove they’ve still got it.

Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor were the greatest beach volleyball tandem of all time, winning three golds together while only losing a single set in Olympic play. But May-Treanor knew she was going to retire after the 2012 games, leaving Walsh Jennings to find a new partner. So after the gold medal match, she approached the woman she’d just defeated, silver medalist April Ross, with a surprising offer.

“At the net, she said, ‘Let’s go win gold in Rio,‘” Ross said. “We hadn’t had that conversation. I was caught off-guard, but it was a no-brainer for me. I was like, ‘Yeah, for sure.’”

The pairing of medalists has worked out well. The two experienced a setback as Walsh Jennings required shoulder surgery this past offseason, causing them to get a late start in their qualification run. But now that they’re back together on the sand, they’re capable of beating anybody, including the Brazilians. Walsh Jennings and Ross have beaten both Brazilian teams in the field -- they swept top-ranked Larissa and Talita in the championship match of an event in Moscow, and own a 3-1 all-time series lead over the other Brazilian pair -- and they’ve won all three events on the American AVP tour they’ve played this season.

Way back in 2003, Dalhausser and Nick Lucena began their professional careers as teammates and best volleyball bro-buds, living together in a beach house in South Carolina.

“One of the guys’ parents had an amazing house right on the beach there, so it was free rent,” Dalhausser said. “It was just a perfect recipe for debauchery and idiocy.”

Lucena even introduced Dalhausser to his wife. But in 2006, Dalhausser was recruited by Todd Rogers, with whom he’d win Olympic gold in Beijing and create one of the greatest beach volleyball pairings of all time.

So when Rogers cut back on his international duties, Dalhausser and Lucena teamed up again, a decade older, significantly wiser, and in their opinions, better. They’ve won four FIVB events this year, including an event in Hamburg where they knocked off the top-seeded Brazilians in straight sets.

Each tournament has 24 teams in it, grouped into six groups of four. If you finish in the top two of your group, you’re through to the knockout stages. If you finish third, you’ve still got a chance of qualifying via “lucky loser” playoffs. Suffice it to say, all the teams mentioned above should be able to make it through, regardless of who’s in their group.