Facing last year’s two national championship contenders this afternoon, the sand volleyball team will try to gain an advantage from the elements today.
As a self-described “shorter” team, coach Stein Metzger said the team will benefit from strong winds in its meet against No. 1 Pepperdine and No. 2 Long Beach State.
“They call the wind ‘the great equalizer,’” he said.
“If you’re a small-small team and you can serve pretty tough in the wind, these big players have a hard time controlling the ball and putting themselves right on the net where they can pound away.”
Among the team’s duos, this is a particular advantage for the week-old team made up of two freshmen – Rachel Inouye and Karly Drolson.
Although both stand at only 5 feet 6 inches, they gave their opponents more trouble than expected in a blowout win over Loyola Marymount last week.
“I didn’t perceive that putting our two smallest players together as a duo – meaning that they have no blocker – would be so good,” Metzger said.
“They’re such amazing defenders that you can’t put the ball down on them.”
But the freshman pair, along with their teammates, will be going up against the stiffest competition they’ve seen all year today. This competition has much more experience in the burgeoning sport that the Bruins only added this spring.
While the UCLA team is comprised entirely of indoor volleyball players that have been pulled to the beach temporarily, there are scholarship members of the Pepperdine and Long Beach teams that exclusively play sand volleyball for their schools.
“We know we’re definitely the underdog, but that’s what also makes the competition a lot of fun,” said junior Meg Norton.
But players like sophomore Zoe Nightingale say that they don’t have time to focus on their competitors – they’re too busy working on picking up the new sport.
“For indoor volleyball, we spend more time focusing on our opponents,” Nightingale said.
“But on the beach we haven’t gotten that much experience yet, so we’re still working a lot on ourselves.”