MESA, Ariz. -- The Master's beach volleyball season has come to an end in the quarterfinals of the NAIA Beach Volleyball National Championships in Mesa, Ariz.
The Sandy Stangs (19-9), which entered the championship tournament as the No. 2 overall seed, lost to No. 1 Southern Oregon 3-1.
"Nationals is never guaranteed," said TMU Head Coach
Annett Davis. "Every year you have to fight and you have to work for it. But I'm proud of them for what they did. They definitely fought hard this last round and I thought we left it all here on the courts and I am proud of them for doing that."
In the first match of the day, which was the final match of pool play, the Sandy Stangs lost to No. 3-seed Corban (OR) 4-1. The lone win of the match came from the 2s pair of
Ashlan Van Groningen and
Isabela Rodriguez (21-18, 18-21, 16-14).
The eight teams in the tournament were then re-seeded based on their results of pool play, with the Mustangs finishing third of the four teams in their pool.
That set up a quarterfinal match with the Southern Oregon Raiders, the No. 2 seed out of Pool A.
Once again the 2s pair of Van Groningen and Rodriguez won their match in two sets 21-17, 21-19. They finished the championships undefeated and ended the season with a 25-3 record.
But that was the only win for TMU as once the Raiders won their third pairs match it was over.
For Izzy Rodriguez, she ends her Master's career as an All-GSAC beach volleyball player.
"It's just been an amazing blessing from the Lord," Rodriguez said. "I would have never expected myself to end up at The Master's University and the Lord just orchestrated His ways to getting me here and then to fit in to the program and make so many friendships. At the start I was struggling as an international student, moving to a new country and a different culture, but the team just brought me in and allowed me to grow and allowed me to be myself and also grow in the Lord. So I look back and know it was a growth in the sport but also a spiritual growth."
Fellow senior Ari DeRaffaele played her final match in a Mustangs uniform as well, getting a pair of wins at the national championships with her partner
Kayla Goodwin.
"I'm a little emotional and a little sad," DeRaffaele said when asked about playing her final beach volleyball match at The Master's. "This team is the greatest thing that has happened to me. This team really helped push me toward my relationship with the Lord. When I came in I was pretty solid in my faith but a little rocky. I had my tendencies elsewhere. But being at the school I was keeping to myself and not really putting myself into The Master's culture. But being a part of this team they pushed me to be the best version of myself that I could be for them and for the Lord. And it was pretty cool to see that growth in myself throughout my time at The Master's. So it's really sad to go and not be in that everyday."
For the woman who started this team and led it to its highest ranking in school history, the season is summed up more than with a last-match loss.
"I told them at the beginning of the season that because we lost six seniors (from the year before) and Grace (Colburn due to injury) that I had no idea what to expect," said Coach Davis. "But these girls are hard workers. They listened to coaching, and to quote Zoe (Yates), she said, 'We were a bunch of scraggamuffins and Coach Annett helped to put us together. And now we are at nationals. It took a lot of work to get here. We had three freshman in the starting line up, so it shows we have depth and we are going to continue to be a great team. I think we have a great base going in to next season."
