One last NCAA title chance for UCLA’s beach volleyball leaders

HERMOSA BEACH, California — For UCLA Beach Volleyball’s three “COVID seniors,” the triumvirate of Lexy Denaburg, Rileigh Powers, and Devon Newberry, there was never a doubt: In spite of technically being in Westwood for four years, they would be coming back for a fifth academic year and fourth athletically. They’d entered school at the most bizarre of times, when a pandemic rendered their true freshmen season in 2020 to just three weeks and 13 matches.

“It didn’t even cross my mind honestly,” Denaburg said of the idea of graduating after the 2022-23 season. “Three years for a natty? No. I need another.”

“It was never even a question,” Newberry added. “Once COVID hit and we got confirmation that we could come back, it was never even a question that we were going to come back.”

Powers, too, was on a similar line of thinking. But there was another member of UCLA’s senior class who couldn’t be as sure. Jaden Whitmarsh had enrolled one year prior, in 2019, but redshirted that season and was granted what could be called a COVID redshirt the next. Her eligibility, then, was no different than Newberry’s or Powers’ or Denaburg’s. But when USC fended off the Bruins in Gulf Shores in 2023, winning 3-2 to snatch a third straight NCAA Championship that seemed destined to be returned to Westwood, a string of dominoes were touched off. Longtime coach Stein Metzger left to start a beach program at Texas, assistant Jenny Johnson Jordan was promoted, former volunteer Jose Loiola took Johnson Jordan’s former post, and another former volunteer in Kelly Reeves was brought on as the second assistant. Between the lack of closure in Gulf Shores and a new culture being instilled at UCLA, Whitmarsh, who entered last year understanding it might be her last, was left unsure.

Newberry told Denaburg there was a “one percent chance” Whitmarsh was returning.

“That’s all we need,” Denaburg said. “There’s a sliver of a chance and we’ll get her back.”

Whitmarsh’s exploits on the court are easy enough to quantify. She has won 85 matches and lost just 16, twice named a member of the NCAA All-Tournament Team, and went undefeated in the 2023 Pac-12 Championships and NCAA Championships. But what she brings off the court, with five years of experience dating back to when the McNamara twins, Sarah Sponcil, and Zana Muno were still running the show, is more difficult to put a value on.

“I used to call her mom,” Newberry said, laughing.

Somehow, Newberry, Denaburg and Powers found a way, taking that one percent, sliver of a chance and convincing Whitmarsh she wasn’t yet finished as a Bruin. When Whitmarsh told her teammates she’d be back, it cemented the final piece of perhaps the most experienced puzzle in NCAA beach volleyball.

“I am definitely feeling old,” Whitmarsh said, laughing. “I am just grateful that I had the opportunity to come back and use my last year of eligibility, especially going out with those three. They’re my closest friends so it feels really good to spend our last year together and make the most out of it. For me, it was a couple of things. I wanted to be a part of a new era with a new head coach. Obviously my teammates. We have such a special culture and a special group, it’s hard to leave that. I feel like there’s so much more to do and I feel like I have so much more to give.”

There is, on the contrary, very little for Whitmarsh or Newberry or Denaburg or Powers to literally do. The only trophy missing from their era in the cabinets at UCLA is that of an NCAA Championship. Only UCLA and USC have ever won an NCAA Championship, though not since 2019 has UCLA taken it home, when Whitmarsh was a redshirt freshman. Had they won in 2023, there is no telling if that would have closed the book on Whitmarsh’s career, and she admits “it would have been different, but I still think I made the right decision.”

Of the 10 players who started the final match at the NCAA Championships, six are back: court one’s Denaburg and Maggie Boyd, court two defender Peri Brennan, Powers on three, Jessie Smith on four, and Newberry and Whitmarsh, who finished the year together on five. Junior Natalie Myszkowski enters the season with a 39-9 record and went 11-2 in 2023, and her freshman year partner, Sophie Moore, is 41-11 in her career. Senior blocker Tessa Van Winkle is no stranger to the starting lineup either, with a 30-11 record in the previous two seasons. A host of freshmen, too, are expected to contribute.

It is that class of freshmen that has essentially allowed the sting of the 2023 NCAA Championships to subside. While some teams might find it useful to remind themselves of the hollow feeling of coming one match shy from sprinting into the teal waters of the Gulf of Mexico as motivation, “this a brand new team,” Whitmarsh said. “Our four freshmen don’t know what that feeling was. They don’t know what it feels like to compete in Gulf Shores. We try to leave what happened in the past in the past. This is a new year and a new journey. It’s a brand new year and we’re looking forward to what’s ahead and staying in the present.”

What’s ahead, in the immediate sense, is a trip to Hawai’i for the annual Duke Kahanamoku Outrigger Classic.

Their first match of the season? A rematch of the 2023 title bout with a fully-reloaded USC team.

“Obviously we know what happened last year but our team this year is a new team,” Denaburg said. “Our team hasn’t done anything yet. Last year was last year and that was a completely different team. We had people graduate, people left. We have to prove it to ourselves what type of team we’re going to be. We haven’t won one game.”

If history is an indicator for UCLA’s four senior leaders, wins will be plentiful in what is, regardless of result, the final season for each of them.

“I feel so much older,” Newberry said. “Last year I didn’t feel ready to leave at all, I felt like I had so much work to do. I still have so much work to do but it’s now a happy and sad thing. As I’m experiencing my last first of things, it’s not much of a sadness, I’m happy to be here but I’m ready to move on next year.”