RIO DE JANEIRO — Courtney Thompson, a veteran setter on the United States women’s national volleyball team, stepped from the side door of the stifling hot gym and into a cool ocean breeze. The beach was close enough to hear waves crashing into the sand. Sugarloaf, the bullet-shape mountain with a cable car to the top, familiar from Rio postcards, loomed overhead.
It was winter back home, but midsummer in Brazil. Thompson’s American teammates were scattered around the globe, in at least six countries on three other continents, playing in the type of professional indoor volleyball leagues that do not exist in the United States.