By Jack Haslett
Editor’s note: This story was written using information provided by the LBSU Athletics website, as no reporter from the Current was on the ground.
Long Beach State women’s beach volleyball took the Big West conference tournament crown on Friday after toppling No.1 seed Cal Poly San Luis Obispo three matches to one at Ocean Park in Santa Monica, CA.
The Beach entered the tournament as the No. 2 seed after a 27-11 regular season record.
To get to the championship matchup against Cal Poly, LBSU first had to carve through three rounds of Big West competition, and excelled each time, not dropping a match against any of its first three opponents.
A pair of back-to-back sweeps on the first day of the competition set the tone for LBSU, toppling California State University, Sacramento 5-0 in the first match of the tournament before giving a similar treatment to California State University, Bakersfield just a few hours later.
Those victories set the stage for a noontime faceoff against the University of Hawai’i in the semi-finals, and The Beach took down the Rainbow Wahine three matches to zero.
That led LBSU to its championship match against Cal Poly. The fourth flight pairing of senior Skyler Germann and senior Natalie Glenn drew first blood for The Beach and took both of their matches against the Mustangs.
Cal Poly answered right away with their second flight squad of Logan Walter and Izzy Martinez taking two straight matches against LBSU duo senior Haley Carrington and junior Julia Westby, the only defeat any LBSU flight suffered over the whole two-day tournament.
The fifth flight, made up of junior Mahala Esser and freshman Tineke Hinton, took down their Cal Poly opponents in two straight matches to 21. They were soon followed by LBSU’s third flight combo of freshman Demi Wagdy and senior Megan Widener, who took their first match 25-23 before dropping the second to Cal Poly by a margin of 18-21.
The second match was a hard-fought battle and racked the scoreboard all the way up to an eventual 29-27 final score as neither duo gave up enough ground to seal the victory until the eventual triumph by The Beach.
Their third match was a return to form for The Beach as Wagdy and Widener prevailed to a 15-12 third match victory to hold down the Mustangs and give The Beach the best-of-five majority and victory.
The conference crown guarantees The Beach a trip to the NCAA Beach Volleyball Tournament, kicking off May 2 in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The trip to Alabama marks LBSU’s third-straight NCAA tournament appearance and the fourth in LBSU program history.
