They beat the rain.

More important, they beat The Beach.

With a 2-1 victory at No. 1 pairs in the final match of the day, Hawaii edged defending national champion Long Beach State 3-2 to finish undefeated Friday, opening the sand volleyball season 3-0.

The fifth-ranked Rainbow Wahine swept the day’s earlier matches, 5-0 against No. 10 Stanford and Loyola Marymount, before pulling out a hard-fought contest with the third-ranked 49ers at Queen’s Beach.

Fittingly, it was decided at No. 1 in three sets, as Hawaii’s Brittany Tiegs and Karissa Cook defeated The Beach’s Delainey Aigner-Swesey and Bojana Todorovic 22-20, 20-22, 15-11 in front of several hundred spectators.

The SandBows host Saturday’s Rainbow Wahine Invitational a pairs bracket tournament involving all four schools from Friday and Chaminade beginning at 9 a.m.

"It was really great for us, we’re a pretty young team," said Cook, a UH graduate student who played four indoor seasons at Stanford. "That was a tough match against Long Beach, a tough win. They played great."

The match showed the mental toughness that is often needed at No. 1. Tiegs, an All-American sand player at Florida State in 2012, and Cook, a setter who helped the Cardinal reach two NCAA regional finals, trailed for most of Set 1 and held off two set points when tied at 20. A net violation on Aigner-Swesey and an ace by Tiegs ended it.

The 49ers took 6-1 lead in Set 2 before Hawaii battled back. The Wahine reached set point at 20-19 only to have Long Beach State scored three unanswered, finishing the comeback when Aigner-Swesey stuffed Tiegs to force a deciding set just the fourth three-setter for the Wahine all day, the second for Tiegs and Cook.

It was a race to 15, with Hawaii pulling away at 10-7 and 12-8. The Beach pulled to within 13-10 and held off one match point when closing to 14-11.

Tiegs again finished it off, setting off a celebration that had the Wahine storm the court about 15 minutes before the rainstorm hit the beach.

"The weather was awesome until after we finished," UH coach Scott Wong said. "Going 3-0 today it’s huge. It’s great to start off the season well after months of training.

"To be the best you have to beat the best and we just beat the defending champions.

"Every match was very important against them. Three of the matches were pretty lopsided and we lost two of those. That win at No. 2 with Katie (Spieler) and Nikki (Taylor) was very big for us. The other team was up 19-14 and they came back to win 22-20."

Spieler, a sophomore sand player, and Taylor, a freshman from the indoor team learning the sand game, trailed the 49ers duo of junior Tyler Jackson, who went 27-0 on the sand last season, and senior Janisa Johnson, who was 25-0 when teaming with Jackson during the championship run. It was 19-14 and, just like that, it was 20-20, with the Wahine putting down the final two points.

Hawaii took match point in Set 2 at 20-19. The 5-foot-5 Spieler received serve, meaning the 6-3 Taylor would set her partner.

"I just went for it," said Spieler, who split the block and hammered the match-winner to the middle of the court. "It was awesome. And it was an awesome way to get started."

"Just to be able to get these top teams out here at the beginning of the season to play is so important. We had a really good start today and we’re excited to play the (pairs) tournament tomorrow."

Long Beach coach Erika Chidester Dillard is looking forward to Saturday as well. She lost half her team from last year "and we’re happy for such a great opportunity to play here," she said. "Scott has created a really good tournament. We knew this would be very good competition with LMU and Stanford, and we knew Hawaii was going to be good.

"This is how we wanted it to have all of our matches competitive."