By When the junior Long Beach State beach volleyball dynamic duo of Malia Gementera and Taylor Hagenah first met, they did not expect to become the most successful pair in LBSU history.
“At first, I was supposed to play with someone else, but then the first match came around, and [head coach Mike Campbell] put us together and since then, we’ve never split up,” Gementera said.
After meeting as freshmen, the pair’s friendship blossomed on a team trip to Alabama for the 2023 AVCA Collegiate Beach National Championships.
Three years later, the two are now best friends and roommates with impeccable chemistry on and off the sand.
“When you play with the same person for so long, sometimes we don’t really even have to communicate because we know what the other person is thinking. You just kind of feel it,” Hagenah said.
For Hagenah, who earned AVCA First Team Junior All-American honors in high school and won gold at the 2022 ISF World High School Championships in France, crafting a legacy for herself was the primary motivator in deciding where to begin her collegiate career.
“When I committed to Long Beach, I wanted to go to a school where we could make history and not just follow behind the footsteps of others,” Hagenah said.
The duo added the crown jewel of their long list of accomplishments at the NCAA Championships in 2024, where they reached the most wins in LBSU history with 62, breaking the previous record set by Tyler Jackson and Janisa Johnson in 2014.
At the Husky Invitational on April 12, the pair reached 90 wins against Florida International University. With one season left, they will soon eclipse the program’s individual wins record of 93, set by Nicci Reinking in 2022.
“With each record we break, it’s motivating to keep pushing and breaking more because we want to make as much history as we can with our time here,” Hagenah said.
Long Beach State women’s beach volleyball junior Malia Gementera rises up for a kill against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with her partner, junior Taylor Hagenah, looking on. The two not only have a great relationship on the court but are also best friends and roommates off the court. Photo courtesy of Josue Vasquez via LBSU Athletics
