Liberty University Club Sports Athletics
Volleyball players prep for nationals at Virginia Beach event
7/8/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Beach Volleyball, DNU Men's Beach Volleyball
Before its top men's and women's tandems fly to Long Beach, Calif., for this Friday's National Collegiate Sand Volleyball Association (NCSVA) National Championships, Liberty University's beach volleyball teams entered six women's pairs and four men's duos into this past Saturday's Big Money Tournament in Virginia Beach.
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| Matt Jones will play men's open doubles with David Hong. |
Facing the toughest competition they have played all year, the Flames and Lady Flames' top teams struggled in the double-elimination open division while their second-tier teammates excelled in the men's AA and women's A brackets.
On the men's side, graduate David Hong and rising senior Matt Jones, Liberty's national qualifiers, battled windy conditions and finished 1-2 on the day to settle for a tie for seventh place.
"They have performed really consistently all season against pretty deep competition, so if they had a bad tournament right before nationals, I'm glad they got that out of the way," Liberty Head Coach Rachel Willis said.
Junior Kaden Knepper and Flames Assistant Coach Kaleb VanDePerre lost their second match to Hong and Jones and were eliminated.
In the AA division, rising seniors Caleb Pitcher and Gene Dejesus, who normally play in the open division, finished first out of eight teams, going 2-1 in pool play and 3-0 in the playoffs.
Junior David Muller and sophomore Nathan Jensen also competed in the AA bracket.
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| Maribeth Kern (left) and Sallie Robertson emerged as Liberty's top female tandem this summer. |
Liberty's women's national qualifiers, rising sophomore Sallie Robertson and recent graduate Maribeth Kern, finished in a tie for 11th out of 17 teams. They lost their first-round match to eventual semifinalists before being eliminated in three games by recent graduate Michelle Melendez and rising sophomore Olivia Jensen in a three-game match decided by a 22-20 tie-breaker.
"That was a nail-biter all the way through, a really intense match," Willis said, noting that Melendez and Jensen lost their next match and tied for ninth place.
In the AA bracket, juniors Ashlyn Whitt and Madison Riley lost in the semifinals to tie for third and Meegan Williams and Madi Malat placed fifth out of eight teams. The Lady Flames' tandems of Ashley McMahon and Danielle Ledgerwood finished first while junior Hannah Hyland and senior Caroline Bertholino took third out of four teams in the A division.
Willis has high hopes for both her men's and women's duos at Friday's national championships, bumped up a day to avoid conflicting with the July 13-16 World Series of Beach Volleyball to be played on the same courts.
"(Hong and Jones) are a little undersized and have had trouble going up against big blocks in the past, but they're really good control players and have really good experience under their belts," she said. "This will be David's second time going to nationals, which will help him handle the pressure."
She said Robertson and Kern should to do at least as well, even in what is typically a larger, more stacked bracket, with a number of top players from NCAA Division I programs competing.
"Sallie and Maribeth have so much potential as a freshman and senior pairing," Willis said. "Each has a wide range of offensive tools and they both have learned and grown so much throughout this season."
Playing on the Pacific Coast, the winds will be different than what the Flames and Lady Flames faced in Virginia Beach and they won't have much practice time after arriving in California on Thursday.
"This will be the first time they don't have two and a half days to get there and get acclimated," Willis said. "You never know how difficult the wind is going to be, but we're hoping they can make the adjustments pretty quickly and get their setting under control."
By Ted Allen/Staff Writer
