CHAPTER 1

She hated how it all worked. Qualifying for Olympic beach volleyball was a long, exhausting process. It was based on points and not on selection, like with some other sports where a committee for each respective country chose the athletes to represent the country, believing those athletes would be the most likely to win them medals. In beach volleyball, it was a point system, accrued over time, and over a long time, too. Qualifying events typically began about two years prior to the Olympic Games, and they took place all over the world.

In some sports, teams and individuals could qualify with one tournament final win or with only a few. In other sports, it was one race or one performance. While there were a few events where teams could get an automatic bid, no one could count on those since it was already hard to get into those competitions because the team had to be one of just a few from their country to even make it. It wasn’t something she thought about much because, in her chosen sport, accruing points was the easiest way to guarantee a spot in the Olympics for her country.

Although, she wasn’t sure it was her chosen sport, it seemed like destiny that Aspen Ashley would play beach volleyball. She’d been compared to Misty May-Treanor a lot throughout her career, and that had started when she’d been as young as twelve. A bit of a prodigy, Aspen was rarely the tallest or even the fastest on the sand, but she’d always been the overall best. Her mom had played indoor volleyball at USC but hadn’t pursued it professionally or for Team USA beyond college. Her dad, on the other hand, had grown up playing beach volleyball and had taught her most of what she knew today. Beach volleyball wasn’t an official college sport when he was in school, though, so he’d played indoor at San Diego State before switching to professional beach volleyball after his college career ended. Aspen had traveled with him and her mom around the country, watching her dad play and, sometimes, come home with prize money. He had never been the top player on the tour, but he’d won a few tournaments in his day. The money he’d made playing wasn’t enough for them to make rent most months, though, so after a few years, he’d given it up and had gone into coaching at a UC school, while her mother had used her teaching degree to teach high school geometry and trigonometry and coached the JV volleyball team there.

Volleyball in all forms was in Aspen’s blood, so it hadn’t been a choice that she’d picked up a ball as a toddler, but it was a choice that she’d continued to play throughout her life and was now making a living at it.

She was twenty-nine years old and could honestly say she got to do the thing she loved as a job, and despite the exhaustion of trying to qualify for the Olympics with tough teams hot on her heels, Aspen knew she didn’t want to do anything else. She hadn’t yet started to worry about what she would do after she retired from the sport, which wouldn’t be that far off. If she were lucky, she’d have ten years left, but she’d made a promise to herself a few years ago that she’d only stick with it if she were still excelling. The moment she started to fade, she’d stop. Aspen didn’t want to be the kind of athlete people talked about and said she should’ve retired three seasons ago. If she managed to stay uninjured and kept up her workouts, training, healthy eating, getting enough sleep every night, and all the other things pro athletes needed to do to stay sharp, she might have eight to ten years. While it was more likely that she’d have five to seven, Aspen was going to aim for that decade.

Right now, she was in Chicago on the USPBV Tour. The name was long, and she sometimes had a hard time saying it in interviews, with all those rhyming letters, but the US Professional Beach Volleyball Tour was the main act in town. Each weekend during the season, the whole tour, including the players, transported themselves to another city – typically, one with a beach, but they went to places and made their own beaches, too. They’d set everything up on Wednesday and Thursday. Tents would be set up, whole stands would go up on the sand, and on Friday, the main matches would start for teams like Aspen’s.

Since some athletes needed to qualify to compete in the main tournament, they’d play on Thursday afternoon and evening for a shot at joining the pros on the weekend. Two qualifier teams would make it out of that round, but they typically wouldn’t make it much further than that. Aspen remembered those days for herself. Right after college, where she’d played beach volleyball and had won two national championships with her mom’s alma mater, she’d joined the tour as a qualifier. She’d been one of the few to make it into the main draw consistently for that first season on the beach. Eventually, she and her partner had earned their spot on Friday mornings, and after her second season and a partner change, Aspen had started to make it into the quarterfinals, and then, the semis. Her first win had come at the beginning of her third season. She’d still been twenty-four, and she and her partner couldn’t believe they’d broken through and had beaten the second-ranked team in the world.

Things had gone well for Aspen after that, and at twenty-five, she and her partner had had enough points to sit in fourth place in Olympic qualifying, something no one had expected from them at that point. Since only the top two teams from the US could go, they’d busted their asses getting to every qualifying event in order to earn more points. A win here, a second-place finish there, a third after that, and they’d gotten themselves into third place with a shot to qualify if they won the last tournament before the Games.

Yes, they had needed a flat-out win – nothing else would’ve done – but Aspen had believed in them. They’d been working hard, and they’d been focused on only this. Or so Aspen had thought. Her partner had played horribly, and no matter how much Aspen had tried to cover for her, they had been the only two on the sand – she couldn’t carry them through a tough three-set match against a tough team from Spain by herself, so they’d lost in the quarterfinals. That had been the end of it; her dream of making the Olympics that cycle. They’d ended in fourth place in US qualifying, and after a long talk between the two of them, they’d decided to part ways.

Aspen was twenty-five by then, at the height of her playing career, and she needed a new partner. Thankfully, she’d worked out with only a few before she’d found DJ, who had also played beach in college, but at UCLA. They’d played against each other a few times then, and Aspen had always thought DJ was crazy talented. She’d had a partner coming out of college, though, so Aspen hadn’t pursued her as a possible partner for herself. DJ was 6’2” and had one of the best line shots on tour. She also had a strong block, a good volleyball IQ, was fast in the backcourt, and had a great, flat jump serve on top of all of that.

They were playing in a final in Chicago after a tough three-set match that morning that they’d had to get through because of the bad weather that had delayed it from happening the previous night. Aspen and DJ were now at the top of the USPBV food chain and played all of their matches on center court, which Aspen had to admit she loved. They’d won the past three tournaments and were predicted to win this one, too, but that morning’s match against a very good team had gone to three sets and extra points in that third set, which, normally, only went to fifteen. Since they had to win by two, it had gone to twenty-three to twenty-one in the end, and they’d run themselves all over the hard-packed sand from the rain the previous night.

They were exhausted, but that was beach volleyball. It was an outdoor sport, and they often had to play three to four matches in three days; sometimes more, depending on the tournament and their ranking in it. If they won in two sets, it was easier. Going to three sets against a tough team and then playing later that same day was harder, though, and they were really feeling that right now.

“Line!” Aspen yelled.

DJ swung, and her line shot landed just out of bounds.

“Shit,” Aspen muttered to herself. “It’s okay,” she added and tapped DJ on her lower back. “No big deal. We’ve got this. We’ll straighten it out.”

“She’s blocking me every time,” DJ replied.

“Go high. Tap it over. We’ll play defense,” Aspen suggested as they both lined up in the backcourt in their ready positions, awaiting the serve.

When it came over the net, it was aimed at DJ, which it usually wasn’t. As the taller player on the court, she wasn’t as good at passing as Aspen was, but by serving DJ, the other team risked having to deal with DJ hitting, so Aspen typically got most of the serves. At 5’11”, Aspen was tall, but not as tall as some of the other players on tour. It made her a better passer, a decent setter, and she had a good kill, along with a great serve, which was her biggest asset. As the normal serving target, DJ would set, and Aspen would spike.

With DJ not playing well today, though, the other team had decided to risk it and had been serving her about eighty percent of the time. DJ was understandably exhausted, and Aspen was trying to carry some of her load as much as she could, but when DJ shanked the pass and gave the other team the ace serve, Aspen saw their win start to slip away. Deep in the second set now, after losing the first, they were down by three, and the other team only had to win by two. They lined back up, after Aspen reassured DJ that they were fine, and the next serve went back to DJ. She passed well this time, and Aspen set her up for a kill. DJ nailed the cross-court shot, and they high-fived. The serve was theirs, and it was Aspen’s turn.

She took a deep breath behind the line, after receiving the ball from the kid who was volunteering at the event as a ball girl, and spun it around in her hands, lining it up just so to hit her jump serve. When the whistle blew, Aspen made her high, spinning toss and jumped. She hit the ball, landed, and ran into her position in the backcourt while DJ was already up at the net, ready to block. Seeing what the other team was doing, though, DJ backed off the block and waited for the softer hit, which came at her arms. Aspen moved for the set, hitting it high up how DJ liked, and DJ went for the kill.

“Cut! Cut! Cut!” Aspen said loudly enough for DJ to hear.

DJ angled her hand and went for the cut shot, putting the ball on the opposite side of the court and just inbounds, earning them another point. Down by one, Aspen started to feel like maybe they had a chance. She served again, aiming for the same player as before, but they dropped their shot over DJ, and Aspen couldn’t get to it. They were back to being down by two, with only two points left for them to earn and win.

“Line! Line! Line!” Aspen yelled when DJ went up for the shot.

She’d seen the blocker back off the net with her short glance to the other side of the sand. She’d also seen the defender on the other side of the court, which meant that if DJ landed her line shot, they should get the point. DJ didn’t land her line shot, though. It went just out of bounds.

“Timeout!” Aspen called, and they hurried over to sit down, grab some electrolytes, and talk.

“I can’t seem to get it together today,” DJ said as she picked up her water bottle.

“Hey, you’ve got this. We’ll go angle and maybe hit a few pokes. We’ll be fine. Let’s just get this next point. Drop it in the back, if you need to. We’ll play D.”

Aspen then looked down and saw the camera that was aimed at them before she took a drink, set the bottle down, and reached for her towel.

There were no coaches allowed on the court, and the cameras invaded their timeouts to provide some kind of all-access view to the people watching at home, but Aspen didn’t like that at all because she wanted to be able to talk to her partner about their game plan without prying eyes or ears.

“Come on. We’ve got this!” Aspen said, and they did their usual out-of-timeout routine before returning to the court.

They only had one chance at this. If the other team scored, the match was over, and they’d come in second. While this event wasn’t a qualifier for the Olympics, it was still important. The prize money awarded for second place was half of what the winners got, and while the fans in the stands and at home saw those winners holding big checks with a giant number on them, the reality was much different than that.

First, even if the prize money was a million dollars – which, it was far from that – two players on the court had to split that check. That alone would reduce Aspen’s share to five hundred thousand, but they also had coaches, trainers, and nutritionists who all had to get paid. On top of that, the players covered their own travel expenses as well as their coach’s, at minimum, for each event. Beach volleyball was never going to make her rich. Endorsement deals that came with making an Olympic Team could help, but for now, Aspen was lucky she was winning a lot of tournaments – or, at least, coming in second.

At this event, the prize money for the winners was one hundred thousand dollars, which meant that if they lost, they would get fifty grand, giving her twenty-five thousand after the two-player even split. That probably still sounded like a lot for a weekend of work, but after paying her people, covering the expenses, and paying taxes, she’d end the weekend with a few thousand dollars, which would be her full week’s pay. It would also have to sustain her if they lost the next tournament in an earlier round and made nothing. Aspen wasn’t exactly living paycheck to paycheck, but it was close most days. So, they needed this win.

The serve went to DJ, who passed it fine up to Aspen. Her set was a little off, but still okay, and DJ swung. It went to the defender, who passed it to her partner, who set it to her, and the shot went over the net. Aspen dug it out, and DJ went for an on-two play where instead of doing the usual three-hit approach with a bump, set, spike, she hit it over on two because Aspen was still getting out of the sand and couldn’t line up a kill. It went straight to the other team, who eventually went for a massive cut shot, and Aspen was on the line. She couldn’t get to it. They’d lost.