Top U.S. teams in an FIVB qualifier?!

Take a look at the brackets for the qualifying rounds of the FIVB Grand Slam in Stare Jablonki, Poland this week and you'll notice something very peculiar: top U.S. teams.

The qualifiers are used to determine the final eight seeds of the 32-team main draw. This week, for example, there were 30 teams in the men's and women's qualifying rounds, and only eight per gender were seeded into the main draw.

For the first time all season, among those women's teams were the American duos of Jen Kessy/April Ross and Angie Akers/Tyra Turner. Among the men's teams were Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal. What?!

Kessy and Ross are the defending world champions, winners of two FIVB tournaments this year, and ranked third in the world. Akers and Turner are 11th in the world, while Gibb and Rosenthal are ranked 10th on the men's side. These elite teams need to play extra matches all of a sudden to get into the main draw at the season's sixth and final Grand Slam?

They do when USA Volleyball forgets to register the teams on time for the tournament. The governing body managed to get five other U.S. tandems into the event, but somehow overlooked these three squads.

Luckily, the promoter of the tournament allowed the teams in as late entries. Both Kessy/Ross and Akers/Turner won their only qualifying match Tuesday to get safely back in the main draw, the former as the No. 5 seed and the latter at 19 (a season-low). They were the top seeds in qualifying, so they received first-round byes and thus only had to play one extra match today.

Gibb and Rosenthal, however, were the third seed in qualifying, meaning they had to win two matches Wednesday to get in the main draw, which they did as the No. 7 seed. But this is a team that's placed 5th at its past two FIVB events. As if the season wasn't draining enough -- Gibb and Rosie haven't had a weekend off since May -- they have to play two matches this week because of a "USA Volleyball registration error."

Just another chapter in the tense relationship between USA Volleyball and the country's top beach volleyball players, one that was thought to be making some good progress.

More to come if we get more info.