Two weeks remained in the beach volleyball Olympic qualification period, but with a first-round loss to Yulia Abalakina and Ekaterina Syrtseva of Russia at the Moscow Grand Slam, Jen Kessy and Emily Day knew their quest for a Rio berth had failed. 

The duo would have had to win the Hamburg Major to qualify for the Olympics. Given the team's highest international finish was a third in the Antalya Open more than six months before, that outcome seemed very unlikely. Indeed, they went 0-3 in pool to finish 25th in Hamburg.

Kessy and Day, who united in early 2015 after London silver medalist Kessy took a year off to give birth to her daughter, accepted it was time to move on. Their last tournament together was the AVP New York City Open, which they entered as the reigning title holders, but finished fifth. 

"It was hard for me," Kessy said. "I love [Emily's] family and her friends. I got a little teary-eyed just saying what a great person she is when I was talking to them and how great she's going to be. She's just such a good person, it's hard to let that go."

A rocky road

The Day-Kessy partnership had its fair share of ups and downs. After finishing ninth in the Long Beach Grand Slam in August 2015, they chose to fire their coach, Rich Lambourne. Soon after, Lambourne bared his perspective on the dirty details of the partnership on the volleyball podcast The Net Live.

"I got a phone call from Jen," he said to hosts Kevin Barnett and Jeremy Roueche. "According to her, she said that she would change partners if she could." 

Due to Olympic qualification rules, a team has to compete in 12 Olympic qualifying events together to even be eligible to receive a berth. Lambourne said he was fired because Day and Kessy couldn't switch partners at that point in the quad. (Listen to the interview in the player below, starting at 1:41:00.)



"Emily and I were both pretty shocked that he said that stuff," Kessy said. "It's not the best thing to go out and say. I think he was just a little bit hurt from being fired.

"The Olympic qualification process is a long, long process. I think I said maybe something to that effect to him after Long Beach, after we had lost a really tough game, but I think [everyone] sometimes wishes they could change their partner. I'm sure [Emily] would have loved to change partners many times throughout the two years."

Moving on

Both women have started the journey of moving on to put this ugly incident and their failure to qualify for Rio behind them one day at a time. Day is playing in this weekend's AVP San Francisco Open with Brittany Hochevar and will travel with her for the Klagenfurt Major, July 26-31. 

"The four of us--Brittany and Jen and Emily and I--hung out a lot on the road," Kessy said. "I know how important playing internationally was to Brittany and Emily. I kind of already had that feeling that the two would be good to play together."

Kessy said with Hochevar and Day forming a team, it was only natural that she and Hochevar's former partner Jen Fopma pair up for San Fransisco. If both newly formed duos win their first round matches, they'll meet in the second round. 

For Kessy, AVP SF will be her last event for the foreseeable future. "I'm not going to go to anything before the Olympics," she said. "Maybe [the Long Beach Grand Slam] will be one that I come back for, and then after that I have no idea. I'm just really burned out on being away from my family for weeks at a time and not really playing great over there. So I'm just going to give myself a couple weeks to breathe."

Looking toward the future

Day, 28, has at least another quad left in her career, and said Kessy helped her see the big picture. "It's tough because we both gave it our all. We practiced hard, we played hard, we went to the tournaments that we needed to and we gave 110 percent, and to come up short really sucks.

"[Jen's] like, 'Em, it's two weeks out of the year. You'll have the shot to go again. You need to work hard, train hard, put yourself in that position.'"

Kessy said, given the chance, she wouldn't do anything differently, but she wasn't ready to speculate about the future of her career.

"It's really tough to always says, 'Yes, I'm going to retire,'" Kessy said. "If I say I'm going to retire right now and have a baby right now, then everyone is going to be asking me, 'Why aren't you pregnant?' And then, 'Why aren't you playing?' There's just so many questions, and I'm just saying I am going to let the universe decide if I play or not."

So with the poise one would expect from two talented professionals, Kessy and Day parted ways to pursue new adventures.