The AVP Hot Winter Nights Indoor Beach Volleyball Tour hit Target Center at 7 p.m. Thursday. Four men and four women worked their magic in a giant sand pit located where the Timberwolves usually play. One of those women, Rachel Wacholder, was nice enough to spend some time Thursday afternoon answering some of our questions. She was a very good sport. Wacholder, 32, is an aspiring Olympian and a newlywed. She also complains that she used to draw comparisons to Anna Kournikova. Ladies and gentlemen, here we go:

RandBall: How did you make the transition from collegiate volleyball (at Colorado) to two-on-two in the sand?

Rachel Wacholder: I never really planned on doing it. A lot of girls finished and knew they wanted to keep playing. I finished playing indoors at Colorado and I stopped. I didn’t play volleyball for a year. I moved to L.A. pretty soon after that, got a job at the House of Blues. I was a hostess and a reservations person. That was at night. During the day, I was interning at TriStar Pictures. They’re no longer, but it was on the Sony lot.

RB: What were you doing for that?
RW: I worked in the creative department, so … I delivered things and I really spent a lot of time sitting in the office. I read all the scripts that came through there because it was fun. … None of them ended up being great movies. There was “Stepmom” with Julia Roberts. But I got to go to premieres. I went to Gattaca. It was fun. So I did that, and then I met a guy and we started dating, and he played beach volleyball. I started going to tournaments with him. I started thinking, “I could do this.” In the meantime, I run into an agent who places people indoors professionally in Europe, and I ended up getting on a team in Spain, so I went there. That was 1999. I went to Spain, and I did that for most of the season, but I quit because it finished because it was terrible. I came back, started to play beach, decided to actually train and give it a shot. That’s sort of how it started. I took it a year at a time and said if I don’t get better, then I’ll stop. Every year, I did better, made more money and kind of moved up. Then I hit a spot where it was frustrating and I wasn’t’ sure if I was going to make it. Then Misty May got hurt right before the last Olympics and [her partner] Kerri Walsh asked me to play with her in a couple of tournaments. We ended up winning two of them, huge Grand Slam events in Europe, and that put me on the map.

RB: Was that a turning point for you?
RW: It was huge. It changed my life and changed my career. I knew Kerri casually through volleyball, and she ended up being one of my best friends.

RB: Was it surprising at the time that she would pick you?
RW: I was like, “What? Seriously?” And I had a new boyfriend, who’s now my husband, and we were in Europe when she said, “Can I talk to you?” It was like, “What! Of course!” My husband was so stoked for me. I learned so much from her and that experience.

RB: We’re coming up on the Olympics, and you have serious aspirations. What has to happen between now and then for that to happen?
RW: Misti and Kerri have pretty much qualified, and there’s three of us trying to get that last spot. I started playing with Tyra Turner last year, and she’s new to the beach game. In AVP, we were pretty consistent. Internationally, we were a little more up and down. A lot of it was just learning how to play together and coming from different experiences with past partners. Toward the end of the year we made a lot of progress. So much of beach volleyball is a relationship. Learning how to communicate is a process. But we’re both nice people who care about what we do. Now, the cutoff is, I think, July 21. We’re going to Australia and we hired an Australian coach who was a gold medalist in the Sydney Olympics (Kerri Pottharst). We’re going to Australia for six weeks to train; we leave in a couple of weeks. We rented a house in Sydney and we’re investing a lot.

RB: Is this kind of the big push?
RW: Yeah. We want to give ourselves the best chance. For me, this is probably the last Olympics I’ll try and qualify for. I want to start having kids after this. She’s probably going to do the same. So we both want to feel like we’re putting it all out there. And we have a chance. We really do.

RB: What about this mini-tour they have going on this winter, including the stop in Minneapolis. What has that been like?
RW: It’s fun, and it’s different. It’s not the same pressure. You can go out and enjoy playing with different people, and you get to know players a little better. … You’re with people for four or five days straight. It’s a different experience for us. It’s just a little hard in the winter to get in a bathing suit.

RB: I was going to say, it has to be weird to be playing when it’s zero degrees in all these northern cities. Is it just weird to think about that?
RW: Yeah, when I’m at the beach playing, I never feel like I’m not wearing much. I never think, “Oh my God, I’m wearing a little bikini in front of a bunch of people.” But here, I kind of feel naked. I’m in an arena, and it’s negative-4 outside and everyone is fully clothed. I do feel a little naked. The moment I can put my clothes on, I do.

RB: I guess along those lines, in doing research for this, I threw your name into Google. The first thing that comes up is, “Pics of the sexy women of sports.”
RW: Oh. Wow.

RB: Obviously like you said, you’re playing a sport in a bikini. It’s not like baseball or football. Is that the kind of stuff that’s going to come with the territory, that people see you as a “sexy woman of sports?” And how do you handle that kind of thing?
RW: I don’t know. I’m really comfortable with my body. I think in the U.S. we’re a little too body conscious. In Europe and other places, you see a billboard with a naked woman putting lotion on, and nobody is like, “Oh, boobs!” It’s just whatever. In a tournament, at the medical tent, it’s not unusual for like one of the German girls to take their top off right there and get a massage. Or for a guy to just drop trou and change. Interesting, right?

RB: Yeah, that’s different.
RW: But the whole sexy thing, too, it’s great if people think you’re attractive on top of being good. In the beginning, it bothered me some because they made the Kournikova comparison with me. And I was wondering if they were saying that I was cute, or that I couldn’t win. And I was like, “thank you if you think I’m cute.” But I also wanted to be first thought of as a good athlete. And on top of it, if people think I’m attractive, I think that’s a bonus and I think that’s great. … But if it gets people out there and they see we’re great athletes, then it’s helping us. But I know a lot of times, too, people don’t take it seriously and that’s a problem. There’s also the image of a lot of female athletes as butch or masculine. And that’s not the case, either. You have all types. I like to be feminine, and I like to be an athlete.

RB: The team that usually plays here – the Timberwolves – not so good.
RW: I know … I’m a Clippers fan, and I’m suffering, too. But they won last night.

RB: I’m wondering what you guys plan to bring to the mix tonight that they haven’t had at Target Center this season?
RW: I think, even if they were successful, what we bring compared to other sports is that we don’t make millions and millions of dollars. We’re out here because we love it and we work hard. We sacrifice a ton. I’m lucky, I’ve made a great living, but nothing compared to them. The things we go through … my reality show would be Sport Swap. Spend a week switching with a professional athlete. Any of the sports. Have Alex Rodriguez book his own flights and his hotel and pay for it all. … We take care of so much on our own. And it’s prize money. It’s not guaranteed. We put our hearts into it every time out, and I don’t think you get that every time out with other professional sports. This is about competing and the love of the game.

RB: OK, a few not-so-serious questions: You got your degree in communications. Do you want to switch jobs with me for a day, you want me to get out there and you do this?
RW: That would be fun. I would love sometimes to have a job. There are times in the middle of the summer, when I’ve been on the road forever, when I haven’t had a weekend in 20 weeks. It’s the summer, my sister and her kids are going to the beach, and I’m thinking it would be nice to have a 9-to-5 job. Just a normal schedule. I fly 120,000 miles a year. There’s hotels. … I’ve had the [Hilton] sponsorship for two years, so I’ve stayed there for two years. I get the nice rooms now. Here, everyone got a normal room and I got a junior suite. I’m by myself in this big room, and I’m thinking I should give it to a couple. Instead, I stayed up watching tennis until 1 in the morning. … The Sharapova match was terrible. She crushed her. The next one, Ivanovic lost 0-6 in the first set and was down 0-2, and then the other girl fell apart a little. I love watching it.

RB: You were married in November 2007. So how’s married life?
RW: It’s great. We’ve been together so long, and we’ve lived together, owned our house, for three years. The only thing that feels a little different is having something definite in our lives. Our lives are so uncertain. Everything is day-to-day with injuries, money, partnerships. We don’t have a lot of stability.

RB: Your bio says “The Shawshank Redemption” is your favorite movie. Is that true.
RW: It’s definitely one of my favorites. I like a lot of movies, but anytime that one’s on I’ll watch it.

RB: Is it because it reminds you of the time you broke out of prison?
RW: Yeah, exactly. … I just like the way it makes me feel. I love the characters, I love Morgan Freeman. It’s just a good story. Great friendship. I don’t know. I love movies.

RB: What’s the last movie you saw?
RW: “No Country For Old Men.”

RB: Great movie.
RW: Yeah. That one, wow. It got it sent to me because I’m a SAG member because I used to do commercials. I keep paying my dues in case I want to work again. We get movies every year that are under consideration. We got “Into the Wild.” … But we watched No Country for Old Men, and I was reading “The Road” at the same time, and it’s the same author. We watched it one night, and then I finished “The Road,” and I had the worst dream. They’re disturbing. Both really dark, but so good.

RB: One more thing: If you could combine beach volleyball with one other activity to form a super-sport, what would be the other activity?
RW: Wow, I don’t know. If you go to Brazil, and you see the footvolley. Have you seen that? Like in Rio, those guys are amazing. They have full games with their feet, knees, chest and head. It’s pretty amazing.

RB: Right, so you’d just steal someone else’s game then?
RW: No, I was just saying that’s an example of the mixed game! To play volleyball with your foot would not be good. … That’s a tough one. Basketball? You have to pass and set and the ball can’t touch the ground and get it in the hoop?

RB: You only get three hits, though?
RW: No, unlimited. You’re just passing and setting. I don’t know. … I’ve never been asked that question before.

RB: I wouldn’t imagine you have.
RW: Or. (pause). Maybe just do some tennis? I’d be good at that. It would be more about scrambling and less about power.

RB: That would almost be like badminton, right?
RW: Yeah. But it would be on the sand, OK?
RB: Sure. Badminton with tennis racquets on the sand.

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