Hey, Stanford Fans!
Can you believe we are over halfway through our season?! We are now in the final stretch, and it's fun to see how far we've come, both as a team and as a program.
Over Spring Break, we headed down to Los Angeles for the Pac-12 South Invitational on Friday after final exams. Personally, I always love playing in LA since it is my hometown, but I also really appreciate the big volleyball community within SoCal. Because SoCal is the hub of beach volleyball, we were able to have Alix Klineman step in as a volunteer assistant coach for the weekend.
Alix played indoor here at Stanford, and she is now playing professional beach volleyball, shooting for Tokyo 2020 with April Ross. We always love connecting with our alumni. Noy only was it great to be able get beach volleyball advice from Alix, but we also enjoyed comparing Stanford experiences and hearing about life after Stanford. After dinner on Friday, we also ran into recent alum Brittany Howard, who is in SoCal preparing for the upcoming AVP season. Payton, Courtney, and I were lucky enough to have been teammates with Brittany during her time at Stanford, so it was nice to catch up with her.
The Pac-12 South Invitational was held in Santa Monica. Plummer, Sunny, Payton and I are all from the Los Angeles area, so it was great to be able to be in our hometowns and play in front of friends and family.
Because we were coming off of a difficult finals week, we spent more of our time in between matches napping, catching up on some much-needed sleep after a long winter quarter.
Overall, it was great weekend in Santa Monica. With three wins over ranked opponents, we extended our win streak to 11, which is the longest in program history. We had a very strong and consistent side-wind throughout the weekend, which is very different from what we experience here on The Farm, so we all learned a lot about how to play to our strengths in different conditions.
The format of the tournament was also a new challenge for our team. Instead of playing the matches in flights, all five pairs played at the same time on five different courts, which meant that each pair wasn't able to have a coach on their court at all times. Under this format, we also weren't able to have the full support of our teammates cheering for us while we played. Despite the changes, our team did a great job of supporting each other in the best way that we could. Our coaches came prepared with scouting reports that they went over with each pair before each match, and while we were playing, they bounced between courts to check in with each pair. Chelsea and Jenn also switched between courts to cheer and were the BEST two-person cheering squad one could ask for. The amount of support this team has for each other is incredible and really makes a huge difference for us. For example, against Arizona, Courtney and Kate were down 19-15 in the second set, but since our 1s and 2s finished up their matches quickly, they immediately went to cheer on our number three pair, giving them the support that they needed to overcome the 4-point deficit, close out the second set and the match, and clinch the dual for our team. The format of the weekend tournament showed us just how vital team support is to our overall team success.
We always love matching up against the other Pac-12 teams. Our conference is so competitive and our opponents always push us to play our best. We were also able to gain some valuable experience against other Pac-12 teams that we will be seeing next weekend for the Pac-12 North Invitational in Washington and later at the Pac-12 Championships here at Stanford.
After closing the Pac-12 South Invitational, we took Monday off of competition. We did a quick serve and pass in Manhattan Beach on Monday morning, then went to the Getty Center. We were hosted by Jane Bassett, who graduated from Stanford Volleyball in 1980 and is now a conservator of sculpture and decorative arts,
She was so kind to us, giving us a tour of the museum and showing us some of her favorite sculptures. Her tour of the Getty was amazing, taking us to her office and to the workshop to show us some of the pieces that they are currently working on restoring.
She was so knowledgeable about art history and conservation, and her passion for her work was so infectious that it has several members of our team looking into more art history and archaeology classes. Our team loved meeting Jane and getting to see the Getty from her perspective.
Away tournaments are great for team bonding, and they are even more fun when we get to travel while on break from school. Since it was our Spring Break, we weren't missing any class for our games, nor did we have any homework to do while on our trip. This allowed us to really rest between matches and be present with each other, which made the trip even more special. After our tour of the Getty, we went to Caitlin's house for a home visit. Since we got there mid-afternoon, we were able to hang out and watch "27 Dresses" before dinner. The Keefes were so generous to open up their beautiful home to our team and our family members who were in town, so the dinner that they hosted was one big, wonderful family gathering. Home visits are always so special because a player gets to show the rest of the team their roots. The beach volleyball team is our family when we are away from home, and so getting to bring our Stanford family together with our real families is always a heartwarming experience.
We played CSULA and Long Beach State on Tuesday to close out our Spring Break competition. After six tough matches in the span of four days, we were all proud of the hard work that we had put in. As I've mentioned before, nothing compares to the immense growth that occurs through competition, so we are excited to take what we learned over spring break to fuel our improvement as we head into the final stretch of the 2018 beach season. We have our last home games of the regular season this weekend, so we hope to see you there! Go Cardinal!