Hawaii won’t have to wait long for its first shot at beach volleyball payback this season.
Less than a week after watching Long Beach State celebrate a tight victory in California, the Rainbow Wahine are eager for a rematch with The Beach in their home sand at UH’s Ching Complex.
UH, ranked 16th in this week’s AVCA Collegiate Beach Coaches Poll and coming off a week-long road trip, opens its brief home schedule with today’s 6 p.m. match with No. 15 Long Beach State. The teams cap the week with a doubleheader on Saturday.
“It’s always nice to be home and especially coming back from a long road trip … you can take a little breath,” first-year UH coach Angelica Ljungqvist said in a Zoom session. “We do have a really quick turnaround. So we get two days of practice here to make some adjustments and get a little bit better every day and prepare, but it’s great to be home.”
The BeachBows make their home debut coming off a 5-4 season-opening road trip that ended with 3-2 losses to Long Beach State and Cal Poly last Saturday to close The Challenge, a two-day round-robin tournament featuring Big West teams held in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
After Long Beach State claimed the first two points of the match, UH answered with a win from the team of Kaylee Glagau and Ilihia Huddleston at the No. 4 Flight and the BeachBows’ No. 2 Flight of Jaime Santer and Pani Napoleon rallied for three-set win.
The match was ultimately decided at the No. 1 Flight, where Brooke Van Sickle and Amber Igiede took the first set before Tyler Spriggs and Mari Molina battled back for a 16-21, 22-20, 18-16 clinching victory.
“It was heartbreaking for sure,” Ljungqvist said. “It’s a point here and there on literally every single court. So small margins, and that’s sports, but we’ve got to get better at closing out our games.”
The pairings to finish the road trip looked quite a bit different compared to UH’s first two days of competition in Davis, Calif. The BeachBows dropped matches with Stanford and California, both by 4-1 finals, along with sweeping two matches with host UC Davis in the first half of the trip.
Van Sickle opened the season paired with Harlee Kekauoha and played with Igiede for the last five matches, going 3-2 at the No. 1 Flight. After Napoleon and Santer were paired midway through the trip the duo won 10 of 11 sets while going 5-0 in The Challenge. Glagau and Huddleston won their first four matches at No. 4.
“It definitely was a switch-up,” Van Sickle said. “Obviously it wasn’t going well against Stanford and Cal so changes had to be made. … I just think that everyone plays well with each other, no one has issues, which makes us better because you know everyone works well with each other.”
Igiede, a middle blocker on the UH indoor team, is in her first season with the beach program and her progress has impressed Van Sickle, an outside hitter indoors who went 7-2 on the sand last season.
“Amber is tearing it up. … She’s a beast on the court and in the sand. It’s unreal,” Van Sickle said. “She’s picking it up very, very fast.”
This week’s series with Long Beach State represents roughly half of UH’s home schedule. The BeachBows play host to No. 5 Cal Poly on April 9 and 10 with a pairs tournament set for April 11.
BIG WEST BEACH VOLLEYBALL
At Clarence T.C. Ching Complex
No. 15 Long Beach State (10-7) vs. No. 16 Hawaii (5-4)
>> When: Today, 6 p.m.; Saturday, noon and 3 p.m.
>> TV: Spectrum Sports (Saturday, 3 p.m. match)
