• Beach volleyball (and its dance squad) takes TODAY by storm

    TODAY was all shook up this morning by the Olympic beach volleyball dance troup. (Yes: That is a thing.)

    Beach volleyball has quickly established itself as the cool kid of Olympic events, what with its gnarly Santa Monican origins and devil-may-care bikinis. It's also got an attendant dance squad, who conga between points and perform full routines during technical timeouts. (See a slideshow of the team performing on NBCOlympics.com.)

    TODAY

    Beach volleyball dancers do the conga!

    As Savannah said, "This has become THE sport."

    Though maybe she should cheer from the stands rather than hit the sands. The anchors' natural athletic prowess didn't shine during a short pickup game against volleyballers Phil "The Thin Beast" Dalhausser and Todd "The Professor" Rogers.

    TODAY

    Matt tried to distract the beach volleyball Olympians with his colorful jacket.

    The gold medalists creamed them, even with Matt, Al, Natalie, Savannah and Hoda all on the same team. 

    It's OK, guys, there's always 2016. 

    Julieanne Smolinski is a TODAY.com contributor who believes there are very few things that can't be improved with the addition of a dance squad.

  • Kathie Lee and Hoda finally trade punches

     

    By Julieanne Smolinski

    Olympic hopeful and MMA fighter Carla Esparza came by to show off some of her boxing moves, and to help our co-anchors practice their uppercuts. It turns out that Kathie Lee and Hoda float like butterflies and sting like… well, butterflies.

    First, they practiced a little shadow boxing, then jabbed at the punching bag with pink mitts. It gave the ladies a chance to show off their fighting styles. Kathie Lee is kind of aggressive! Who would have thunk?

    "Now you should fight each other," Carla suggested. Uh oh.

    KLG was all for it and started windmilling towards Hoda like a gel-manicured Joe Louis, but Hoda was not going to take things to round two.

     
    "This could be bad," said Hoda, putting down her dukes. "I don't want to hurt her!"

    KLG technically took the round, but it's possible that Hoda just fears her own strength.

    Julieanne Smolinski is a TODAY.com contributor. She has a mean left hook.

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