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Walsh Remains in Pain, but Winning Ways Don't Wane

Uncategorized Nov 15, 2012

By David Leon Moore

Via USA TODAY

BEIJING — Kerri Walsh's and Misty May-Treanor's waltz through pool play in their quest for the first repeat gold medal in Olympic beach volleyball history might have looked routine. It wasn't.
In fact, nothing this summer has been routine for Walsh, who is in more pain and has had more worries about her right shoulder than she normally lets on.

Though the gregarious Walsh is, in public, perpetually smiley-faced and provides more happy talk than Mister Rogers, she wasn't so cheery on that van one early morning in June in Berlin on her way to play a semifinal in her first international tournament of the year.

Walsh had taken a brief break from the AVP Tour schedule because of recurring soreness in the shoulder on which she had surgery in November to repair a torn rotator cuff.

In Berlin, two months before the Games, she was in agony while riding to a match she wasn't sure she could finish.

It was then that she began to receive treatment from an FIVB (international volleyball federation) physiotherapist named Periklis Charpantidis. He's Walsh's secret weapon in the Olympics. Charpantidis, a Greek who lives in Athens, is in Beijing and performing acupuncture on Walsh's shoulder twice a day, and it's feeling better each day.

"Don't ask me how to spell his name," Walsh says, "but he's doing wonders."

There's still pain, and she's been wrapping her shoulder in black "kinesio tape," which she says increases circulation in the joint. But her downcast mood in Berlin is long gone.

Charpantidis has been treating Walsh from time to time the last two months as she and May-Treanor have continued a historic winning streak that stands at 18 tournaments and 105 matches. They haven't lost since Aug. 19, 2007.

This morning (Thursday night ET), Walsh and May-Treanor improved to 4-0 by defeating Liesbet van Breedam and Liesbeth Mouha of Belgium 24-22, 21-10. They now advance to the quarterfinals, which begin Sunday.

"A couple of months ago, we weren't sure that if Kerri got into a jam she'd be able to bang her way out of it," said Troy Tanner, Walsh's and May-Treanor's coach. "But today she really swung away and hit a couple of balls really hard.

"She likes to just bang her way out of a pickle, and she did that today."

Walsh is where she wants to be. "It was hard earlier in the year," she says. "I was so bummed out in April, May, June. Misty and Troy kept saying, 'Look, it's not about June and July, it's about August.' "

Today, Walsh turns 30.

The perfect gift? A pretty set from May-Treanor, high and just off the net.

A set on which she can just bang away.

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