The number one TMU Beach Volleyball pairing of
Desi Brown and
Katie Emmerling won both of its matches on Friday against NCAA Division I CSUN and NCAA Division II Concordia University Irvine. However, the Matadors and Eagles won every other matchup, handing the Mustangs a pair of 4-1 defeats at the CSUN Beach Volleyball Complex.
"The highlight of today's matches was our one's team," Master's head coach
Annett Davis said. "This was the best beach volleyball that I have seen this duo play. They have shown that they can compete and win at an extremely high level."
In TMU's first match of the day against CSUN, with the other four matchups already settled, Brown and Emmerling prevented a shutout by winning in consecutive sets: 21-17, 26-24.
Then against CUI in the afternoon match, Brown and Emmerling dropped the opening set, 17-21, but fought back to win the second set by flipping the score. The senior duo then dominated the third set, 15-5, to claim a point for TMU.
"Desi's defense was tremendous," Davis said of Brown. "It was like she was reading the opponent's minds as she picked apart their offense one at a time."
Another highlight for Master's was two Mustangs making their collegiate beach volleyball debut. After
Kylie Clouse appeared for the first time on the sand for TMU last weekend,
Anna Poole and
Hannah Wood did the same on Friday.
"Currently we are missing three of our athletes from three different teams and had to make some last-minute adjustments to our roster," Davis said. "Thankfully we had some girls willing to help the cause come over from our indoor team."
Davis hopes her team learned a lot from playing against such high-quality opposition.
"We knew that playing NCAA Division and Division II teams was going to be a challenge," Davis said. "It was a rough day for our newly-formed teams, but as with anything that's hard in life, you learn great lessons. Our girls hopefully learned a lot today."
TMU will play two more NCAA Division I opponents on Saturday, this time on the campus of CSU Bakersfield. The Mustangs will take on the host Roadrunners at 10 a.m. before going up against Cal Poly at noon.
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