The team started their season scraping snow off the courts and wearing sand socks.
Now, in a first for the burgeoning program, the Colorado Mesa University (CMU) women’s beach volleyball team hoisted the AVCA Small College Beach Championships plaque after their final match on April 16, in Tavares, Florida, also becoming the first non-coastal school to win.
“It was great. It was amazing,” Beach Volleyball Head Coach David Skaff said. “It really showed all the work the girls have put in this year in our training, while we’ve been preparing for it to come together this year was awesome. Like it’s still a little surreal at this point.”
The team went 5-1 during the tournament, only dropping a single match to Palm Beach Atlantic University. On their run, CMU beat the defending champions University of Tampa 3-2, beat Texas A&M Kingsville (TAMK) for the first time 5-0 and beat the 23-9 Spring Hill College 3-1 in the championship.
“It’s kind of crazy. Just the fact that our beach program hasn’t been around for very long […] and it’s one of the newer teams on campus coming out strong like that. The amount of progress we’ve made in these past short couple years has been enormous and it’s just really cool to prove ourselves and see that we are a good team,” sophomore player Hahni Johnson said.
Johnson, together with redshirt sophomore Savannah Spitzer, pair at the ones for the team. The Mavericks pair got All-American honors at the end of the tournament.
“I love playing with Hahni. […] Beach is big on communication. I’m playing with her, and I could say one word and I know what she wants and she knows what I want. And it’s a really cool dynamic, especially because we both play indoor together too,” Spitzer said.
In their second match of the tournament, a 5-0 win over Catawba College, Johnson and Spitzer went up 1-0 in their sets before losing 27-29 to bring a game 3, which they won 15-10.
“We got a little bit frantic in that second set because they were up and we would do things that we wouldn’t normally do, and we decided to just calm down and do what we’re good at, and that was swinging and hitting good shots,” Johnson said.
The Mavericks then went on to beat Wayne State College and TAMK, with a loss to Palm Beach Atlantic University.
“We drew Tampa for the first round in the semis the next day. And we were excited about that because we knew Tampa was the team to beat and we rather play them the first game of the morning than having to try to fight with them at the end of the day in the heat. And I think once we beat Tampa, we kind of had a feeling of hey, the championship is in our grasp, we control everything, and the girls got really excited,” Skaff said.
The Tampa win came down to the fives slot, with sophomore Sabrina VanDelist and redshirt junior Tye Wedhorn winning 2-1, with the last game going 15-12.
“When all eyes came on to the five score, our girls just had blinders on. I felt like they were just no fear, just knew what they needed to do. And then it came down to that last point and it was a bit of a rally but when that ball dropped, just pure emotion,” Beach Volleyball Graduate Assistant Erin Perez said.
After finishing 1-12 during the program’s inception in 2016, CMU finished over .500 for the first time this season, going 16-10.
“The biggest difference has been the dual athletes ratio compared to just beach players. My freshman year I think there were only two or three just beach athletes and now this year we had, I believe nine. So I think that’s a big difference,” redshirt senior Ara Norwood said.
Norwood, who played on the beach team as a freshman in 2016, will finish her beach career at CMU with a record 36 wins, over second-place redshirt junior Holly Schmidt’s 27 so far. Norwood is graduating this Spring with her Master’s in Sports Management.
“It’s incredible,” Norwood said. “There’s no way I could do it without the team for sure. I wouldn’t have surpassed that milestone if it weren’t for all the great teammates and partners I’ve had.”
Also known as “Bob” Norwood was a captain on the team this season and is grateful for the role she was put into.
“I’m incredibly grateful [being in that leadership role] because it just shows the respect on the team. Being the captain, I’ve kind of been in that position for a few years now. You have the experience and it’s just sharing that with the younger girls. Sometimes it’s instilling confidence, like it’s just easy things like ‘hey, you’re fine. It happens to us. It happens to me. Did you see me a play ago? It still happens,’” Norwood said.
Next year, the team will be returning 9 out of the 10 starting pairs. Norwood knows that this team is going to continue to shine throughout the years, hopefully bringing another trophy back to the Grand Valley.
“I think that gosh, this team is going to be great next year if they keep it up. I have faith that they will but the level of play is for sure the highest it’s ever been in this program I think across the board,” Norwood said.
