NCAA Championship 'Super Nationals' features current and future professionals

This weekend’s NCAA Beach Volleyball National Championship is, as Louisiana State University’s Kristen Nuss labeled it at the beginning of the season, “the Super Nationals. All these super teams out there. It’s wild.”

Since 2016, when the NCAA approved beach volleyball as a championship sport, it has become the fastest-growing collegiate sport in history, adding programmes and scholarships at an alarming rate, which has created a trickle-down boom at the grassroots level. That boom has moulded the NCAA system into one of the finest talent pipelines in the world, fine-tuning Olympians - like Latvia’s Tina Graudina at the University of Southern California - and those currently in the Olympic race - former UCLA Bruin Sarah Sponcil and USC Trojan Kelly Claes, for example - and a long, long list of 20-somethings prepared to take over as the next generational wave of professionals on the AVP and FIVB tours.

What makes this weekend’s National Championship the ‘Super Nationals,’ as Nuss dubbed it, is that a large portion of that list is still competing in college.

With COVID cancelling the 2020 season, athletes - including Nuss, the winningest player of all time in college beach volleyball - were given an extra year of eligibility. In an already-talented field of teams, programmes were able to retain almost all, if not all, of the players on their roster, while still adding recruits who were ready to enter the starting lineup and compete.

Which makes this weekend  all the more thrilling.

Never has the field been this deep. The NCAA Championship features eight teams: three from the West Region of the United States, three from the East Region, and two “at-large” teams from anywhere in the country, chosen by a selection committee. Those eight teams field five pairs. The team who wins three out of those five pairs wins the overall match and move on in a double-elimination bracket that begins on Friday in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The event will be televised on ESPN.  

Those eight teams include: No. 1 UCLA, coached by former Olympian and AVP professional Stein Metzger; No. 2 USC, helmed by 2000 Olympic gold medallist Dain Blanton; No. 3 Florida State, coached by former AVP professional Brooke Niles, the wife of Olympian Nick Lucena; No. 4 LSU, coached by Russell Brock and led by Nuss and Taryn Kloth, the only undefeated pair this season; No. 5 Loyola Marymount, coached by FIVB gold medallist and longtime AVP professional John Mayer; No. 6 Stanford, coached by Andrew Fuller and Olympian Lauren Fendrick; No. 7 Cal Poly, coached by 2008 gold medallist Todd Rogers; and No. 8 TCU, coached by Hector Guitierrez, who has coached a number of FIVB national teams.

If you think that’s a talented roster of coaches, wait ‘till you take a look at the players. UCLA is one of the youngest teams in the nation yet enters as the No. 1 seed of the tournament, having just beaten USC for the Pac-12 Conference Championship. Sophomores Devon Newberry and Lindsey Sparks have both competed internationally, with a pair of fourth-place finishes in FIVB youth events in Buenos Aires and Nanjing. Lea Monkhouse, a junior, has competed for Canada, entering the Edmonton 3-star qualifier alongside Florida State’s Molly McBain. That doesn’t even mention the Bruins’ top court of Savvy Simo and Lexy Denaburg, both of whom have more than enough talent to compete on the AVP and FIVB – they just haven’t yet.

Second-seeded USC, meanwhile, has literal Olympians in the lineup. The Trojans’ top court includes Graudina, who qualified for the Tokyo Olympics after winning the Tokyo Beach Volleyball Qualification Tournament in Haiyang, China, in 2019. She’s partnered with Megan Kraft, a freshman who already has a fifth-place AVP finish to her name, alongside Delaynie Maple, who is competing on court four with Joy Dennis. Julia Scoles and Hailey Harward have both already won tournaments replete with AVP professionals, including the AVP America Nationals, held in Clearwater, Florida, last fall. On court five is Audrey and Nicole Nourse, who have made two AVP main draws as well as five main draws on the FIVB in 2019.

At No. 3, Florida State’s lineup includes an FIVB gold medallist in Torrey Van Winden, who won the Porec 1-star in 2018 with Cal Poly’s Emily Sonny. She’s on the top court with Keara Rutz, and together they went 29-6 this year. Formerly on the top court, now on the third, is Molly McBain, who has already taken a fifth on the FIVB, at the 2019 Miguel Pereira 1-star with current LMU court four player Darby Dunn.

Who did she beat to get to fifth? Brazilians Victoria Lopes and Taina Silva, who were just competing in the Cancun Bubble.

On court four for Florida State is Sara Putt, who made her first professional main draw as a teenager, when she qualified on the NVL.

LSU, the fourth seed, might have the fewest professional experiences among the title contenders in Gulf Shores, yet it boasts the team who is perhaps the most prepared to make the jump in Nuss and Kloth. Last summer, Nuss and Kloth won every tournament they entered, beating a host of professional fields in Atlantic City, New Orleans, and Nashville, where they topped current Olympic contenders Kelley Kolinske and Emily Stockman in the finals. They are the undisputed best pair in college beach volleyball, and it would be somewhat of a shock if that run didn’t continue well beyond this weekend.

In the first round, LSU will play LMU, whose top court includes Iya Lindahl and Megan Rice. Lindahl is the current owner of the lowest seed to ever make it out of an AVP qualifier, making the main draw at the Hermosa Beach Open in 2018 despite being seeded Q84. She then made main draw again in Hermosa Beach in 2019, and in Manhattan Beach two weeks later, finishing ninth with former Hawai’i Bow Morgan Martin. Formerly on the top court for LMU, and now on the second court most likely, is Reka Orsi Toth. If her name sounds familiar, it should: she is the sister of Viktoria Orsi Toth, who will be competing in the Tokyo Olympics with Marta Menegatti. She’s partnered with Swiss player Selina Marolf, who has competed in a number of youth FIVB and CEV events.

Darby Dunn, who took fifth in Miguel Pereira with Florida State’s Molly McBain, has been competing on the fourth court for LMU. Not only does she have an FIVB fifth to her name, but she also owns a NORCECA gold medal, won in La Paz of 2019 alongside Devon May.

Stanford, the six seed, alongside TCU and LMU, is making its first NCAA Championship appearance in school history. Its lineup is not filled with an abundance of professional experience, though a handful of players – Charlie Ekstrom, Sunny Villapando, Amelia Smith – have competed in a number of AVP qualifiers. Maya Harvey, who is paired with Ekstrom, took a ninth at a 2018 FIVB youth event in Nanjing, alongside USC’s Megan Kraft.

Playing USC on Friday morning will be seventh-seeded Cal Poly. We’ve already mentioned one of their top court players, Emily Sonny, who won an FIVB gold medal with Torrey Van Winden, who is now at Florida State. Sonny is paired with Macy Gordon, who has come close to making main draw in a number of AVP events, as has Amy Ozee, who is on court No. 2. Tia Miric, a court three defender, might have the most high-level experience of anyone in the field, aside from USC’s Graudina. She has played five youth FIVB events for Canada, winning in Cyprus with former USC Trojan Sophie Bukovec.

Rounding out the field is Texas Christian University, whose top court pairing is a legitimate FIVB pairing: Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno Mateeva. Together, they’ve competed in Sweden, Portugal, China, Argentina, Russia, and Italy, and are registered for the Ostrava 4-star and a CEV in Baden, Austria.

So yes, this weekend, all of those players mentioned will be taking on the NCAA, attempting to bring home the Super Nationals.

Then it's onto taking on the world.

Quick links:
FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour
Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
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