There is a specific kind of third set you only get at double elimination events, and it does not happen on Friday. It happens on Saturday afternoon, after you have already lost once, when the sand is a little warmer than it was at eight in the morning and the math of the bracket has stopped being theoretical.
I watched one of those third sets in Austin this past weekend.
The Junk twins, Addi and Avery, were in a grinder against Maya Gessner and Kate Reilly on Court 5. They had already split the first two. The third set went their way, fifteen to seven, and it was the third time they had gone the distance that weekend. They are seventeen years old. They live in Redondo Beach. And in August they are getting on a plane to Tallahassee, together.
Two Names, One Court
Addison and Avery Junk are twin sisters and a beach volleyball pair, which is probably the single most efficient sentence you can write about them. They play out of Manhattan Beach Sand. They finish their senior year at Redondo Union High School in May. They have been a pair on the sand for five years, which is longer than most college partnerships last.
If that sounds like a lot to pack into one sentence, it is. It is also the reason people are paying attention.
They did not start there. They started as soccer players. AYSO, kindergarten. Avery was a defender with the farthest kick in the league. Addi, in her sister's words, was the midfielder running around "with her head cut off like a chicken." They picked up volleyball at twelve. Indoor first. The sand came later. What you see on the court now is the result of that sequence, not the accident of it.
Addi said it plainly in an FIVB interview last fall: "Beach volleyball is more fun because your partner is like your family and we are actually family so it made sense to us. We've played together for like five years now."
There is nothing to add to that.
Addi is five-foot-nine. Libero indoor, a defender PrepDig's Michael DeLeon said "has no regard for her body" in her "relentless pursuit of the ball." Avery is five-foot-ten, right-side indoor, left-handed on the sand.
I assumed one of them was the blocker and the other was the defender. Most pairs work that way. These two do not. Addi corrected me. They do not consider either of them a blocker. They split. They take turns blocking and defending point by point to stay in rhythm. That is not a role. That is a conversation.
Avery being left-handed is still the one fixed thing. It changes the angle off the net. It changes what the defender on her court has to see. Addi's word for her sister's opening was "lethal." You do not fake that kind of fit.
The Road Here
Last fall they went to Doha for the FIVB U18 World Championships and came home with a silver medal. Pool play, six wins, zero losses. The gold medal match was an all-American final against Jordyn Scribner and Ella Grimes, and the Americans took it in straight sets.
Earlier that spring they became the first pair in Redondo Union program history to win a CIF Southern Section pairs title. Then Redondo won its first team crown. The twins did not play together in the deciding team match. Avery paired with Abby Zimmerman for that one, because pairs volleyball and team volleyball are not the same sport and the best programs know it.
The USA Volleyball development system has been training them for four years. They get on a plane four times a year for it. None of this just happened.
Why Tallahassee
You do not pull Southern California twins to the East Coast by accident.
Southern California is the deepest recruiting pool in American beach volleyball, and it is mostly a USC and UCLA orbit. It has been that way for a while. Stanford is in the neighborhood. LSU has been fishing in these waters successfully. But Florida State is not usually where SoCal twins end up.
Except Brooke Niles has been building something. Three hundred wins and counting. Nineteen AVCA All-Americans coached. A program that has played in every NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship since the tournament existed. Currently ranked fifth in the country as of mid April, twenty-nine wins against two losses, in their first Big 12 season.
What FSU has never done is win a national championship. Three runner-up finishes. No title.
I asked them if committing together was always the plan. Addi did not hedge. "We always knew we wanted to go to school together. Especially if we were going to go all the way across the country it would be too scary to go without one another." That is a seventeen-year-old saying the quiet part out loud. Going together was the whole conversation.
Pulling two commits out of Redondo Beach who already play as a pair is the foundation of a breakthrough. Florida State did not just land two recruits. It landed a pair. You put the Junks on the roster, you give Niles another recruiting cycle, and the thing people have said is impossible for a decade starts looking like a matter of when.
What Austin Showed
The AVP Austin Open was the first Heritage Contender event of the 2026 season. Thirty-two teams per gender in the main draw. Double elimination. Real stakes, real prize money, real pros.
The Junks went four and two.
They won their first three on Friday. Castillo and York in straight sets. Horton and Wetterstrom in straight sets. Then a three-set grinder on Court 1 against Natalie Myszkowski and Jessica Smith. Could have gone either way. Fifteen to thirteen in the third.
Saturday morning they ran into Marine Kinna and Devanne Sours. Three sets again. This time the third one got away. Ten to fifteen is the kind of score that does not feel like a blowout, but it is the kind of loss that sits on you for the next few hours.
They had those few hours. And then they came back through the elimination bracket and beat Gessner and Reilly in three. That was the match I was watching when I decided I was going to write this.
The tournament ended for them later that afternoon against Molly Phillips and Abby Van Winkle. Eight to twenty-one. Ten to twenty-one.
Three out of six matches went three sets. Read that twice. They are high school seniors. They are playing an AVP Contender field. They had been on the sand since seven thirty Friday morning and the last match of their weekend was against a pair that had something they did not have left.
That is not a failure. That is a data point.
The thing you notice from the sideline, which a scoreboard cannot tell you, is how they interact. Or more accurately, how little they need to. It is simply the occasional statement of affirmation. Five years of the same partner is a language. I watched them reset a point, walk back to the baseline, and say essentially nothing. Addi told FIVB about her sister last fall, "I feel like I know everything she wants to do before she does it and it's the same for her." You see that the second you start watching them on the sand. You see it in the step they take before a serve is touched. You see it in the way the defender moves without being told.
That kind of fluency is not something a coach installs. It is something a coach inherits.
They still argue. I asked what the most common fight is on court. Addi said it is usually about who takes the middle ball. That is not a sister fight. That is a pair fight. Every two-person team in the sport has the same argument. Five years in, so do they.
What Comes Next
There is a fair question about how twin pairs work in college beach volleyball. Coaches hate being told who plays with whom. Rosters have depth for a reason. The McNamara twins at UCLA, Megan and Nicole, set the gold standard. Two NCAA titles, 2018 and 2019, and they were the first all-freshman AVCA All-American pair. They showed the sport what this can look like.
It can also look different. Avery and Addi might walk into Tallahassee and get a court together. They might not. That is Coach Niles's call. When I asked them about it, Addi did not flinch. "Nothing is given. We prefer to play together but we are willing to do whatever is best for the team." Freshmen do not usually walk onto a top-five program's roster talking like that.
But they have five years of chemistry, a U18 world championship silver medal, a CIF title, and a four-and-two weekend at the AVP Austin Heritage Contender event. You build a blueprint with less than that.
Avery told FIVB last fall, talking about Doha, that the goal was "a great start to our career because we want to pursue this (beach volleyball) after college." College has not even started. Los Angeles 2028 is two summers away. That math is not accidental.
The Last Thing
Austin was the first Contender of the season. For most of the pairs on that sand, it was a tune-up. For the Junk twins, it was an audition for what the next few years are going to look like.
I was on the sideline watching. I took the photos.
I asked them what they hope Seminole fans say about the Junk sisters four years from now. Addi gave me the competitor answer. Hard workers. An undersized team that out-works and out-hustles everyone on the other side of the net.
Avery gave me the sentence I could not stop thinking about.
Hopefully that we played nothing like our last name.
There is a long way between a Saturday in Austin and a Sunday final in Los Angeles. But the twins from Redondo Beach have already walked further than most people think.
Tallahassee is next.
Matt Powell is a professional sports content creator based in Houston who specializes in volleyball photography. See his volleyball portfolio or get in touch about coverage for your program or athlete.
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