#1 USC vs #3 UCLA 2-22-2025 BVB
Dear Readers~
The 2025 NCAA Division 1 Beach Volleyball season has begun! The first game to be covered will be #1 USC (University of Southern California) taking on #3 UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) at the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Beach Classic that took place from Thursday February 20th to Saturday February 22nd in Honolulu, Hawaii. The event itself is named after Olympian Duke Kahanamoku (1890-1968) who is from Hawaii and competed in the 1912 Stockholm, 1920 Antwerp, and 1924 Paris summer Olympics as a swimmer and is known as the 'Father of Surfing'. With the history lesson over, let's get back to the beach volleyball game between the USC Trojans and the UCLA Bruins to see who walked away victorious.
The reason these two teams were chosen for the first blog of the 2025 season is because they were the finalists for the 2024 National Championship that took place in Orange Beach, Alabama, where this year's national championship will take place from May 2nd to May 4th due to the NCAA deciding Huntington Beach, and its sponsor Long Beach State, is unable to host due to the devastating fires that recently happened in early January in Los Angeles. Since the college Beach game had their first national championship in 2016, the National champions have been either UCLA or USC, which tells you how successful those schools are when it comes to this sport, not to mention it's been won by only three different coaches, Anna Collier (2 for USC), Stein Metzger (2 for UCLA), and Dain Blanton (with 4 and also the most recent four all for USC). USC has won the National Championship every year since 2021 and are looking to make it 5 in a row come May with Blanton still as their coach.
For those who don't know, NCAA and Professional Beach Volleyball have the winner determined a little differently. In both sports the pair who wins has to win 2 sets whether it be by winning both sets, first to 21 in this case, or by winning 2 of the 3 sets, with the first two sets playing to 21 and the third playing to 15, with all three requiring a lead of 2 points or more. In the pros once a pair win their two sets, they have won the game and move on in the bracket, but NCAA is a little different, just because you've won two of your sets doesn't always mean you've won the game. In order for your school to win in NCAA your school has to win at least 3 of the 5 games they have going on against the other school. By that I mean each time a school plays against each other, they have their top 5 pairs playing each other and in order to win your school has to have at least 3 of your pairs beating 3 pairs of your opponents, for example in 2024 USC won 3-0 over UCLA but in 2023 USC won 3-2 over UCLA for those National Championships. Now let's get into the game of USC taking on UCLA in Hawaii.
Going into this match up, USC was 2-2 while UCLA was 5-0. USC beat Hawaii and Arizona State but fell short to Loyola Marymount (or LMU for short) and Stanford meanwhile UCLA beat TCU (Texas Christian University), Arizona State, Hawaii, Stanford, and LMU. This was UCLA's last match up of the weekend while USC had one more left against TCU. With this being the first tournament of the season, both teams want to be off to a great start so let's see how this crosstown rivalry goes as they compete in Hawaii's Waikiki Beach.
The first pairs to be covered are the 5's which has USC's Delaney Karl and Kaileigh Truslow competing against UCLA's Harper Cooper and Sophie Moore. This game ended at 21-18 and 21-19, both in favor of USC and giving them a 1-0 lead over UCLA, with only two more wins to beat UCLA. The next pair to be covered are the 4's with UCLA's Alexa Fernandez and Kaley Mathews against USC's Madison Goellner and Ella Larkin. This game ended at 21-15 and 21-19, both in favor of UCLA and giving each team 1 win and only two wins left to go. The next pair up were the 2's which had USC's Kennedy Coakley and Mabyn Thomas against UCLA's Peri Brennan and Natalie Myszkowski. That game ended at 21-14 and 23-21 (remember that minimum 2 point lead you need to win) both in favor of UCLA. Next up was the 3's which had UCLA's Kenzie Brower and Ensley Alden take on USC's Ashley Pater and Maya Gessner. The first set ended at 21-13 in favor of USC and the second set ended at 21-16 in favor of UCLA, leading to a third set. The third set ended at 17-15 (remember the third set only goes to 15 but that the minimum of 2 points to win is still enforced) in favor of USC and giving each team 2 wins so it all comes down to the 1's to see which school comes out victorious. The 1's had UCLA's Sally Perez and Maggie Boyd taking on USC's Madison White and Zoey Henson. The first set was a piece of cake for USC ending at 21-6 but the second set was much closer. That set ended at 24-22, also in favor of USC and giving them the 3-2 victory over UCLA that the Trojans needed to win. That gives UCLA a 5-1 record in Hawaii to start the season meanwhile USC would later go on to play TCU after this match and win that one 3-2 as well and have them leaving Hawaii with a record of 4-2 to start their season.
As previously mentioned, USC's head coach is Dain Blanton but what was not mentioned was that one of UCLA's assistant coaches is Kelly Reeves. The reason I bring the two up is because for those who don't know, Blanton competed for Team USA in Beach Volleyball at the Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 Olympics, where he would go on to win gold in Sydney but fall short in Athens, and would go on to retire a few years later, while Reeves formerly competed on the AVP before retiring herself. As someone who has met both of these people, with Blanton being the first of many Olympic gold medalists I have met over the years, they are both people worth meeting. With Blanton being a commentator for those watching Pro Beach Volleyball, better known as the AVP, at home and Reeves still having friends on the AVP, they both can be seen at so many AVP events every summer if you're interested in meeting either of them.
That concludes the first blog covering the 2025 NCAA Division 1 Beach Volleyball season. Stay tuned for the next blog covering another beach volleyball game between two schools. Until next time, Miller out
~J. Miller
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