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Everything To Know About Sara Hughes and Kelly Cheng, the U.S. Beach Volleyball Duo Aiming for Gold
Reunited five years after dissolving their partnership, former USC stars are surging ahead at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
As a team, Sarah Hughes and Kelly Cheng dominated college beach volleyball during their first act.
They might be even better for the sequel.
During their run together, the duo won 103 straight matches for the University of Southern California and notched the sport’s first two NCAA titles. They went their separate ways, however, shortly after turning pro in 2018, each finding new partners and experiencing varying levels of success.
Realizing their best hopes for the 2024 Paris Olympics rested in rekindling the partnership, Cheng (formerly Claes) reached out in late 2022 to ask Hughes to meet for coffee. Hughes accepted both the invitation and eventually the offer to re-team that came with it. A year later, the pair became the first American team to win the world championships in 14 years.
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Now, they're moving into the next round of competitions at the 2024 Paris Olympics and hopefully on their way to continuing Team USA’s run of four gold medals in the last five Summer Games in beach volleyball.
"We have really good chemistry. Our styles of play complement each other really well," Cheng told Olympics.com. "We're both at the same stages of life and on the same page with a lot of things. And I think that's just helped us fight hard together and fight for each other on and off the court, which I think is really important."
Hughes and Cheng Moving On to Round 16
The duo beat Germany's Svenja Müller and Cinja Tillmann on Friday, meaning their moving ahead in the competition. The next set of matches resume on Aug. 4.
“That team is really really good and we knew we had to come in there and serve tough and battle and fight and that is exactly what we did,” Hughes said of Germany's Müller and Tillmann, according to USA Volleyball. “It was really fun to come out with a big win against a great team.”
Hughes and Cheng are now preparing for the elimination rounds of the Olympics, an experience they've relished.
"This has been so special to go into this with Sara and really fight to enjoy all the ups and downs,” Cheng said. “All the little things, and I think we have been doing that."
Who Are Sarah Hughes and Kelly Cheng?
Hughes, 29, and Cheng, 28, were born just five months and a short drive apart.
The Southern California natives were both early volleyball prodigies, with Cheng learning the game on the hardcourt and Hughes taking to the growing offshoot of volleyball that made its Olympic debut at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.
They ended up paired together as high school students, winning the bronze medals at the 2013 FIVB (Fédération Internationale de Volleyball) U19 World Championships and at the 2014 FIVB U21 World Championships.
When they both arrived at college, however, the partnership truly gelled.
How dominant were Hughes and Cheng (Claes) at USC?
At first the two were partnered with other players, but were reunited for their final three years of college. Dubbed “Cardinal and Gold” for both the respective hues of their hair and in tribute to the official school colors, Cheng and Hughes helped make USC a national juggernaut in beach volleyball.
During their three-year stretch together, the Cardinal and Gold were nothing short of dominant. In their first year, they led the Trojans to an AVCA National Championship. They led the school to the first two NCAA championships in the sport in 2016 and 2017; and won the World University Games in 2016. They finished their collegiate career with a 147-4 record.
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After graduating, the pair tried to keep the magic going on the professional beach volleyball circuit, but internal tensions led to them dissolving their partnership in 2017.
“We just needed to grow up and to understand the professional aspect of the sport a little bit more,” Hughes recently told Time Magazine.
What brought Hughes and Cheng back Together?
Hughes teamed up with Summer Ross with hopes of Olympic glory, but they didn’t qualify for the Tokyo Games after Ross suffered a back injury in 2019.
Meanwhile, Cheng and her new partner, Sarah Sponcil, earned an Olympic berth, but were eliminated in the Round of 16.
Realizing that she played better with Hughes and that their best chances for Olympic success heading into the next Olympics was together, Cheng reached out to her old partner for a meet-up to mend fences.
“We hadn’t played together for five years,” Hughes told NBC Sports in April. “We’ve seen each other. We’ve talked to each other, but we had to come to terms with a lot of things, apologize to each other, see what our goals were, so there was a lot going on.”
They clicked immediately, winning their first four tournaments. Besides their 2023 FIVB World Championship title, Hughes and Cheng took home gold in Ostrava, Czech Republic in June -- the final qualifying tournament before Paris.
Hughes and Cheng are coached by the latter’s husband, Jordan Cheng, and associate Southern California coach, Gustavo Rocha.
Who are Hughes/Cheng’s Biggest Competition at the Olympics?
The pair enter the Olympics as the third-ranked team behind the Brazilian powerhouse of Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda) and Ana Patricia Ramos and fellow American dynamos Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth. The women’s beach volleyball field is deep for the 2024 Games, with strong teams from Germany, Switzerland, and Canada in the mix.
While there has been a changing of the guard in the sport, experts say this is Team USA’s best chance to send two teams to the medal podium since Kerri Walsh Jennings/Misy May-Treanor and April Ross/Jennifer Kessy won gold and silver respectively at the 2012 London Games.
Kloth/Nuss are the defending Pro Beach Tour champions and finished third at the 2023 FIVB World Championships.
Originally published Jul 26, 2024.
