U.S. Wins First Gold in Women’s Volleyball

TOKYO — Every journey up the Olympic mountain comes with a series of incidents that, in retrospect, seem meticulously designed but were in fact just rolls of the dice that paid off.

Take the United States women’s volleyball team. It first qualified for the Olympic tournament in 1980, but missed those Games because of an American-led boycott. It has been chasing an Olympic title ever since.

Despite a collegiate infrastructure that churns out volleyball talent on an assembly line, the U.S. women had never won the gold medal. They came close twice, winning silvers in 2008 in Beijing and again at the 2012 London Games and a bronze in Rio in 2016, before finally reaching the top step on Sunday in Tokyo, 3-0 winners over Brazil.

The turning point for the current team’s success most likely has roots in two coaching decisions more than a decade ago.

After the 2008 Olympics, Hugh McCutcheon stepped down from coaching the U.S. men’s team after leading it to the gold medal and agreed to take over the women’s program.

That created an opening on the men’s side. One of the candidates for the job was Karch Kiraly, America’s first true volleyball star. As a player, Kiraly had led U.C.L.A. to national championships and was the heart of the United States team to the gold medal in 1984. Later, he helped to popularize professional beach volleyball, in which he also became a champion.

It would have been entirely understandable if Kiraly had felt his celebrity entitled him to the men’s job. He did not. In fact, he said, he felt unqualified, and said as much to the leaders of U.S. volleyball.

A few weeks later, he ended up sitting next to McCutcheon on a plane. McCutcheon had an idea. Come be my assistant with the women’s team, he told Kiraly. Get some experience and then take over when I leave.

And that is exactly what Kiraly did.

“I can’t imagine coaching any other team,” Kiraly said earlier this week, as the United States steamed toward Sunday’s gold medal match. “I love them to death.”

As a U.C.L.A. graduate, Kiraly is well-versed in the teachings of John Wooden, the university’s legendary basketball coach, and the Wooden idea that paying for a team gives you an opportunity to be a part of something larger than yourself.

His assistant coach, Marv Dunphy, is fluent in Wooden’s methods, too; he spent hours interviewing the coach before his death in 2010. The team he and Kiraly exemplifies the methods they learned: flexibility in service of stability; moving fast but also taking your time; a willingness to relish in small gestures, and a recognition that athletes are humans and not robots.

Kiraly barely mentioned his team’s talent and athleticism when he talked about it at the Games. Instead, he has spoken with pride of the atmosphere of “trust, accountability and democracy” the women have created for themselves.

Foluke Akinradwedo, a veteran middle blocker, said the team made a conscious decision in recent months to verbalize its emotions about the tension inherent in its quest for gold rather than run away from it.

“We allow ourselves to say to each other, ‘I’m nervous,’” Akinradwedo said after the Americans’ quarterfinal win over the Dominican Republic. “We say we’re nervous, and then we get after it.”

The team’s run to the Tokyo 2020 final began long before the summer. Back in the spring, the United States brought its best players to the Volleyball Nations League in Italy, an annual competition among the top volleyball-playing countries.

Several countries chose to rest their top players this year; Kiraly used it as a kind of tryout, bringing 18 players and then whittling his roster to the top 12 he would take to Tokyo. The United States won the competition and has not let up since.

In its run to the gold medal game, the team lost plenty of points, seven sets and even one match, a 3-0 drubbing by Russia’s team. And they rolled with all of it.

On Sunday, though, they completed their journey to their first gold with a sweep of Brazil (25-21, 25-20, 25-14). Andrea Drews had 15 points and Michelle Bartsch-Hackley added 14.