NCAA beach volleyball: TAMUCC on the rise; Pac-12 South review; another big week ahead

As the NCAA beach volleyball season rolls into its fourth week, we take an in-depth look at ladder-climbing mid-major Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, review the fallout from the combustible Pac-12 South Invitational and preview the East Meets West Invitational on Manhattan beach, where Southern invaders Florida State and LSU will need to make waves.  

Islanders on the uptick

After consecutive Southland Conference titles, earning automatic bids to the last two NCAA Beach Championships, Coach Gayle Stammer’s Texas A&M-Corpus Christi program has bumped its head on — gotta do it — the grass ceiling.

As March Madness looms in basketball, folks filling out tournament brackets soon will tackle the challenge of choosing between mid-major underdogs vs. the usual suspects in those confounded 5 vs. 12 and 6 vs. 11 games.

Beach volleyball isn’t there quite yet, but pure odds dictate that eventually a team not named USC or UCLA will win the national title.

Meanwhile, in a young sport defined by a handful of perennial “haves,” a few long shots and a lot of “have nots,” a program on an upward trajectory such as the Islanders from Corpus Christi craves the one or two significant upsets that might help get it past the “hyphen” or that unwieldy alphabet-soup branding of “TAMUCC.”

Patient building over five mostly forgettable seasons by Stammer has put her Islanders in the catbird seat of the Southland, which grew to eight members with the addition of startup McNeese State. In 2022, TAMUCC was 21-12, and won the league tournament before losing to 3-0 to TCU in the eight-dual “knockout” round of the NCAA’s hybrid championship.

Last season, the Islanders improved to 25-10, knocked off higher-profile programs in Arizona and Florida Gulf Coast, rolled through the conference tourney and beat Ohio Valley Conference champion Tennessee-Martin in the play-in game to the 16-team single-elimination NCAA bracket. A 3-0 loss to UCLA ended the promising campaign.

After three weekends of the 2024 season, TAMUCC is 10-3, the losses coming to resurgent Cal Poly 4-1, perennial power LSU 4-1 and Tulane 3-2. The Islanders hold a 4-1 victory over the Green Wave, who are 10-4, and took three matches out of five against Big West member UC Davis (6-6, 20-12 in 2023).

“This is my third ‘build’ as a coach and you’ve got to go through a lot of losing early on as you are recruiting and laying the foundation,” the veteran Stammer told us this week. “Through that, I’ve learned how to ‘sell the dream.’ You’re just selling the dream, selling the dream and all of a sudden, you’re in the middle of it.“

Stammer had been coaching indoor ball at Division-II Dominican University of California in San Rafael, but when she saw the sand sport gaining its legs at the collegiate level, “I knew I would pop on over to the beach because that was how I could best grow the game. I was confident that if I could get in a good situation early, with a fully funded program, totally separate from indoor, that I could build something and do it relatively quickly.”

In a locale with the natural advantage of gorgeous white sand beaches, she found herself “in heaven,”  in Corpus Christi, population 316,000, on Texas’ Gulf Coast, and not just from a volleyball perspective.

“It’s beautiful. There’s nobody on the beach. It’s never crowded. I’ve not seen traffic since I’ve been here,” said Stammer, who played at LSU, professionally in Italy and then enjoyed a productive professional career on the beach during the 1990s as a main-draw staple of the defunct Women’s Professional Volleyball Association tour.

“The quality of life is amazing. I love it.”

While the Islanders have cleaned up against the teams they are supposed to beat, recognition in the form of a top-20 ranking in the weekly AVCA beach coaches poll has not come yet, although they are second among others receiving votes with six.

“If you look at the TruVolley rating, we’re 17th on that list. It’s based on statistics, not on opinions,” Stammer said. “When (TV analyst) Holly McPeak was doing her list of the teams not ranked in the top 20, we were in that. Last season in the (AVCA) coaches poll, we didn’t get any votes at all, not one vote. And then after the national tournament, we received 10 votes in the last ranking.”

Stammer conceded that her Islanders might get noticed, “if we expand where we’re going. I told my AD that we need to get out to California more. I feel like people aren’t seeing us.

“How are the coaches going to vote for us if all they see are results? I’m a mid-major. It’s just a reality that all of the conferences aren’t equally weighted.”

TAMUCC might gather more momentum during a Northern California road trip this weekend against Stanford and North Florida in Palo Alto on Friday, followed by matches with Utah and host San Jose State (a Southland member) on Saturday. A competitive showing against the powerful Cardinal and three in the wins column would be a strong result. North Florida pretty much is in the same “rising-mid-major” boat as the Islanders.

Giving Stammer great hope for the future has been the play on the No. 1 court of 5-foot-11 Kristin Bobay (the Southland freshman of the year in 2023) and 5-foot-10 Madison Morrow (a portal acquisition from Stephen F. Austin), both sophomores.

“So we’ve got two sophomores at the 1s and they’re really good,” Stammer said. “Madison was one of the best players at SFA, where she was a blocker, but for us she’s a full-time defender.”

Stephanie Young, a 6-foot grad transfer from Florida Atlantic, has been a boon to the Islanders’ lineup and 5-foot-10 junior defender Hannah Doyle has gone 11-2 on Court 3, scoring the team’s only point during the loss to Cal Poly while paired with Aussie Cassie Dodd.

A 6-foot-2 freshman, Dodd is a member of the Australian Volleyroos indoor national team and posted a top-10 finish in the 2022 under-19 world beach championships. Lending a veteran presence has been grad student Chloe Tome, the Southland’s newcomer of the year last season. Dodd and Tome were the Islanders’ lone point-scoring pair against LSU.

Hot duals in the desert

In its final go-around as a league, the Pac-12 placed seven of its nine beach programs in the latest weekly AVCA coaches top 20 poll, sitting first, second, third, sixth, 11th, 14th and 19th. The parity among the top five teams in a stacked “Conference of Champions” was again reflected in the results last weekend during the three-day Pac-12 South Invitational in Tempe, Arizona.

UCLA (11-4) dropped a 3-2 decision to Stanford, but won every match in duals against host Arizona State, Washington and Oregon. The Bruins dropped a spot to No. 2 in the rankings after losing for the second time in three outings to the Cardinal. Stanford (10-2), however, was a 3-2 victim on the Sun Devils’ home sand, then defeated California 5-0 and swept Oregon, which departed the desert with a 1-11 record and was 1-for-41 in sets over its 20 matches. The poll voters moved the Cardinal to third from second.

Cal (9-3) was elevated from sixth to seventh on the strengths of a 3-2 victory over Arizona State, and sweeps against Utah (6-6 overall and 0-4 on the weekend) and the toothless Beavers.

The Sun Devils (8-2) picked up that noteworthy victory over Stanford and also hung a 3-2 loss on rival Arizona. Arizona State moved down one spot to 11th, but their top pair of Daniella Kensinger and Anya Pemberton, who went 3-1, were honored as the Pac-12 pair of the week. Straight-sets scores by Kensinger and Pemberton were instrumental in their team’s triumphs over Stanford and Arizona (8-3), which stayed at No. 19 despite a 1-3 mark, the lone “W” coming by a 3-2 margin over the Utes.

Remaining at No. 14 was Washington (5-7), which split its four tests and topped Arizona 4-1.

So who’s on first?

After being the only team to avoid getting burned on desert sand, three-time defending NCAA champion USC (12-2) vaulted back into the No. 1 spot. The Women of Troy were spotless in four victories over Washington, Arizona, Utah and Oregon, with only two matches, both against the Wildcats, going to third sets. Megan Kraft and Delaynie Maple dominated the top court with four sweeps and an average set score of 21-13.

Around the nation

No. 4 Florida State is the only undefeated squad left in the AVCA Top 20. The Seminoles ran their record to 13-0 on Tuesday in Boca Raton, tuning up for this weekend’s East Meets West Invitational on storied Manhattan Beach. with victories over No. 16 Florida Atlantic and Florida Gulf Coast, all matches won in sweeps. Also in the Capri Classic tri-dual, the host Owls (9-4) topped FGCU (9-7) 3-2.

Last weekend in the Tampa Invitational, FSU blew through host Tampa (ranked 20th at 7-7), Florida Gulf Coast, Coastal Carolina and Houston Christian, all by 5-0 counts. FGCU’s Shelby Biesner and Trinity Rosales gave the Seminoles’ undefeated pair of Maddie Anderson and Skyler Germann quite a three-set tussle on the No. 1 court, with the tiebreaker going to a 30-28 score.

Sarah Riedell and Norwegian national Martine Kragholm of Coastal Carolina (6-6) took three out of four at the 1s (falling only to Anderson-Germann) as the Chanticleers went 2-2, earning them pair-of-the-week accolades from the Sun Belt Conference.

By running the table against nationally ranked Loyola Marymount, Florida International and Stetson (plus Southern Miss) at its hometown Beach Invitational, Long Beach State made a favorable impression on the pollsters. Coach Mike Campbell’s fast-rising Beach bunch climbed to No. 7, then added to their resume with home-sand victories on Wednesday against No. 15 Georgia State 4-1 and No. 17 Grand Canyon 5-0. Georgia State (9-4) also topped Grand Canyon (4-6) 4-1, with three of the match victories needing three sets.

No. 10 Loyola Marymount (7-6) rode a see-saw in the weekend Long Beach event, losing to the host squad and Florida International by 3-2 scores while sweeping the courts against No. 18 Stetson (7-5) and Southern Miss. FIU’s Giada Bianchi and Reka Orsi Toth were named the AVCA’s national pair of the week with four victories on the No. 1 court as the No. 12 Owls (9-2) also beat Santa Clara 4-1 while losing 4-1 to the Beach and 3-2 to No. 9 Cal Poly (10-2), which went 4-0.

No. 13 Hawaii (6-5) gained traction for the East Meets West with a first-place undefeated finish in its six-team Queen’s Cup tournament, including a 3-2 victory over Boise State (11-6) in the final. The BeachBows’ Jamie Santer and juco transfer Alana Embry were unbeaten at the 1s and thumped the Broncos’ Marlayna Bullington and Sierra Land by a 42-24 margin in the championship dual. Santer and Embry were picked as the event’s outstanding pair and the Big West honored them as its pair of the week.

No. 5 TCU (11-1) won four duals by an 18–2 margin during its Horned Frog Challenge in Fort Worth. Hailey Hamlett and Angelina Khmil are 12-0 at the 1s and have been pushed to three sets once.

Elsewhere, North Florida (9-3) threw a monkey wrench into South Carolina’s plans with a 3-2 victory over the hosts in the Gamecock Challenge, winning at the 2s, 4s and 5s. The Ospreys have created some curb appeal. The Gamecocks (7-5) finished 3-1. … North Carolina-Wilmington (8-2) put together a 4-1 mark at Cal State Bakersfield’s ‘Runner Invite, splitting duals with Cal State Northridge (7-4). The host Roadrunners (7-6) were 3-3. … North Alabama (9-3) won all four duals in its UNA Invitational. … With its 5s duo of indoor crossovers Natalie Mitchem and Masyn Navvaro earning two victories and the pair-of-the-week award from the Ohio Valley Conference, Eastern Illinois (3-3) eked out a doubleheader at McKendree 3-2, 3-2.

Click here for the complete AVCA coaches poll.

This week’s schedule

This weekend’s marquee events, both falling on Friday and Saturday, are the East Meets West Invitational at the most venerable sand in American beach volleyball, Manhattan Beach, California, and the Florida Atlantic Invitational on Pompano Beach, which brings together USC and TCU.

The West side of the lineup in Southern California has UCLA, Loyola Marymount, California and Hawaii. The East teams are FSU, LSU, Georgia State and free-falling Grand Canyon. As the West Coast powers have taken turns trading haymakers with each other, Florida State has waited in the weeds for its opportunity to strike. This weekend could very well be the Seminoles’ coming-out party.

On the heels of announcing a five-player freshman recruiting class for 2025 that includes the daughter of a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, LSU (8-1) also has an opportunity to add significant bullet points on its resume.

The eighth-ranked Bayou Bengals’ only blemish is a 3-2 setback to TCU. Entering Coach Russell Brock’s program next season out of Miami will be Zoe Taylor, whose dad, Jason, was a six-time Pro Bowl defensive end during a stellar 15-year NFL career. Zoe has two older brothers playing college football, Isaiah at Arizona and Mason at LSU.

Meanwhile on the gleaming white coral sand of Florida’s East Coast, juggernaut top pairs collide when USC’s Kraft-Maple and TCU’s Hamlett-Khmil square off. Also in the FAU invite’s tantalizing lineup are the host Owls, Florida International (with Bianchi-Orsi Toth) and D-II Palm Beach Atlantic (9-6), which comes off a 3-1 weekend at Eckerd’s Battle on the Bay that included a 3-2 victory over Missouri State (11-2).

Stetson gets a week to recharge, welcoming North Alabama, North Carolina-Wilmington, Jacksonville and College of Charleston to DeLand, Florida, for its Spring Invitational.

Stanford has tri-dual home dates on Friday (against North Florida and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi) and on Monday (against San Francisco and Saint Mary’s). Moving down the bay, on Saturday and Sunday six teams surely will know the way to the Sand Jose Invitational (get it?). The field has host San Jose State, Saint Mary’s, Utah, Sacramento State, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (on Saturday against North Florida and Utah) and Sierra College (a two-year school in exhibitions on Sunday).

Second-year program Texas will make its debut under Coach Stein Metzger in a six-team event at Long Beach City College on Saturday and Sunday. Joining the Longhorns are Nebraska (in a rematch of the 2023 NCAA indoor championship match), host Long Beach State, Arizona, Pepperdine and Cal State Northridge.

Southeastern Louisiana’s Sugar Beach Bash on Friday and Saturday will welcome Boise State, South Carolina, Tulane and Alabama-Birmingham.