TAVARES, Fla. – It took a little bit of a roundabout road to get there, but Colorado Mesa is in the Champions Bracket, guaranteed a top-four finish and two wins away from a title at the AVCA Small College Beach Championships from central Florida on Saturday.
The No. 3-seeded Mavericks lost their final pool play matchup to No. 6 seed Palm Beach Atlantic 3-2, but subsequently beat Pool D winners and No. 5 seed Texas A&M-Kingsville 3-0 in the Challenge Round to advance to the top bracket. CMU's court five duo of
Savannah Spitzer and
Sabrina VanDeList went 2-0 on the day to lead the Maverick effort.
Colorado Mesa will face tournament No. 1 seed and Pool A winners Tampa in the semifinal round on Sunday at 8:30 a.m. (MT). The semifinal clash will serve as the rubber match for the two programs, who have met in the championship match of this tournament in the past two years, with the Mavericks winning two years ago and the Spartans winning last year.
No. 2 seed Concordia University Irvine and No. 4 seed Saint Leo will meet in the other semifinal, after which the losers of the two semis will play in the third-place match and the winners will meet in the championship match at 12:15 (MT).
The top four seeds have advanced to the Champions bracket despite two of them (CMU and Saint Leo) not winning their pools. Saint Leo defeated Palm Beach Atlantic in the Challenge Round. However, CMU's pool play loss and win over the Pool D winners means that the Mavericks have effectively slotted into the No. 4 seed, the difference between meeting Tampa in the semifinals rather than the finals.
Colorado Mesa dropped a game against Palm Beach Atlantic to close out group stage play in Pool C, after the Mavericks and PBA each went 2-0 against their other pool opponents on Friday. Colorado Mesa won on court one, with
Hahni Johnson and
Amanda Ollinger defeating Gabriella Aziz and Abigail Mason 21-11, 21-17, while Spitzer and VanDeList grabbed a win on court five, beating Karla Cantero-Garcia and Oda Stray Homme 21-15, 21-16.
Palm Beach Atlantic had CMU's number on the middle courts, however, winning on two, three and four to pull out the victory. The Sailfish tallied straight-set victories on two and three as the match came down to a three-setter on court four. PBA's duo of Julia Golichowski and Abigail Plevin defeated CMU's
Barett Nolan and
Gracyn Spresser 14-21, 22-20, 17-15 to seal the dual.
While the sixth-seeded Sailfish beating the third-seeded Mavericks was an upset in terms of seeding, it was not in terms of history. Colorado Mesa has never beaten Palm Beach Atlantic in three attempts, all of which have come in Tavares at the AVCA Small College Beach Championships. A possible good omen for the Mavericks is that Palm Beach Atlantic was the only team to defeat CMU during the Mavs' championship run two seasons ago.
Despite the loss, the Mavericks remained eligible for the Challenge Round. As the second-place finisher in Pool C, the Mavericks faced off against the winners of Pool D, which ended up being a familiar foe in Texas A&M-Kingsville. The No. 5-seeded Javelinas also pulled off a mini-upset over No. 4 seed Saint Leo to win Pool D and set up the matchup with CMU.
Colorado Mesa had already played and defeated Texas A&M-Kingsville twice this season, but whatever sports cliches exist about it being tough to beat a team three times were proven wrong by the Mavericks on Saturday. The Mavs tallied three straight-set victories to clinch the dual by a 3-0 margin, forcing two matches that went to a third set to go unfinished.
Spitzer and VanDeList got their second win of the day on court five, beating TAMUK's Rylie Anderson and Meghan Stiefer 21-15, 22-20. Also locking up wins against the Javelinas were CMU's No. 2 duo of
Riley Daugherty and
Sierra Hunt (over Grace Gettys and Adrienne VanBrunt, 21-18, 21-16) and CMU's No. 4 duo of Barrett Nolan and
Gracyn Spresser (over Liana Huesca and Taylor McCarthy, 21-11, 21-19) to avenge the three-set loss earlier in the day.
Johnson and Ollinger blew out the Javelina No. 1 duo of Ryland Pollard and Kalani Vasquez 21-8 in the first set, but the Texas tandem came back to win the second set 22-20. They were tied 1-1 in the third set when the match was called.
On court three,
Savannah Ott and
Taylor Scherff battled with TAMUK's Madelyn Wallace and Olivia Ziegler. Each pairing won a set 22-20, with the Mavs taking the first and the Javelinas taking the second. Wallace and Ziegler were leading in the third set 6-5 when the match was called.
