The beach volleyball team fell one game short of being the best in the nation for back-to-back years. After going 5-1 during the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Small College Beach Championships, the Mavericks finished as a top-two team in the country for two years in a row.
This year, Colorado Mesa University (CMU) posted their best regular season record ever, going 14-7. All seven losses came at the hands of Division I opponents, six of whom were nationally-ranked in the top 25, or were at least receiving votes to be. The Mavericks swept nine of their duals, and they won four more duals by multiple set margins. Suffice to say, they dominated their DII competition.
CMU traveled to the tournament in Tavares, Florida as the fourth seed and started their playoff run with a convincing 3-0 sweep against 12th-seeded Erskine College on April 14.
Junior Hahni Johnson and redshirt junior Savannah Spitzer, who went 3-2 in last year’s tournament, won their sets 21-13 and 21-18. Sophomore Jada Hall and redshirt freshman Gracyn Spresser took the next match, while junior Sabrina VanDeList and redshirt senior Tye Wedhorn won their seventh straight AVCA playoff match to secure the sweep.
Later in the day, the defending NCAA DII champion Mavericks swept 13th-seeded Florida Southern College 5-0. CMU confined their opponents to 10 or fewer points in four of the 10 sets. The duos of redshirt senior Holly Schmidt and redshirt senior Macie Lachemann, as well as Hall and Spresser, each accrued their 20th wins of the season during the dual.
The next day, No. 5 Spring Hill College (SHC) took CMU to 5 sets, but the Mavericks ultimately pulled off the comeback to advance to the quarterfinals. These teams have a history as CMU defeated SHC to win last season’s national championship.
SHC took the first match 2-0, before CMU responded with a 2-0 match win themselves. The Badgers again took the lead after a 2-1 match win, before the Mavericks again retaliated with a VanDeList and Wedhorn 2-1 duo win, which evened up the team score at 2-2. In the final match, however, redshirt juniors Savannah Ott and Hailey Peters put a definitive end to the dual, winning 2-0.
In the challenge round, the Mavericks defeated No. 6 Texas A&M-Kingsville 3-1. Spitzer and Johnson eked out a hard-fought match, a 23-21 and 21-19 win, to secure the dual. That duo now holds the best match record on the team at 23-8.
CMU then faced what was supposed to be their biggest test of the season to that point when they took on second-seeded Concordia University Irvine (CUI) on Sunday morning. Surprisingly, the Golden Eagles were not even the hardest dual for the Mavericks in the playoffs, as they swept CUI 3-0.
The Mavericks then took-on powerhouse No. 1 ranked University of Tampa (UT) in a highly-anticipated DII national title game. The Mavericks defeated UT 3-2 in the semifinals last playoff run. Unfortunately, the Spartans made quick work of CMU this time around, winning 3-0 with the closest set being 21-18.
Despite the heartbreaking loss, the team has to be proud of how this season went and how the program is looking in general. Established in just 2016, the beach volleyball team’s ascent to the top of the DII world is remarkable.
This year was just their second winning season and yet the Mavericks advanced to their second national championship, of course winning it all last season. The team will be losing Wedhorn, Lachemann and Schmidt this offseason to graduation, but will retain their top pairing of Johnson and Spitzer, along with junior Sierra Hunt who missed most of this season with injury. CMU will surely be a title contender next year as well.
