BATON ROUGE, La. – Weekend two of the beach volleyball season begins on Friday afternoon for HCU with the Huskies traveling to Louisiana to take part in the LSU Tiger Beach Challenge at the LSU Beach Volleyball Stadium.
HCU (1-3) is set for four duals across two days, first taking on No. 13 LSU (5-0) at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 27, followed by Tulane (2-3) at 4:45 p.m. On Saturday, Feb. 28, the Huskies will open the day against North Alabama (3-2) at 9:15 a.m. before closing things out against UAB (2-3) at 2:15 p.m.
The Huskies opened the season last weekend at home, hosting the Third Coast College Classic. HCU opened things up with a 3-2 win over Tarleton State but dropped matches against No. 3 Cal Poly, 5-0, Saint Mary's, 4-1, and Southern Miss, 3-2. HCU's court two pairing of
Hannah Foor and
Paige Palmer posted a 2-2 record on the opening weekend with victories over Saint Mary's and Southern Miss.
LSU enjoyed a perfect opening weekend, registering wins over then No. 20 Tulane, South Florida, Oregon, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Spring Hill College. The Tigers' No. 1 pair of Kenzey McGatlin and Julia Sprecher posted a 4-1 record to begin the season.
Tulane earned its two wins over Oregon and New Orleans while falling to LSU, South Florida and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. The Green Wave's top three pairs all finished the first weekend with record of 3-2, including the court 1 duo of Katie Hansen and Emma Morris.
North Alabama suffered losses to a pair of ranked opponents, No. 8 Florida State and No. 18 Georgia State, but picked up wins over UAB, Cal State Bakersfield and Southeastern last weekend. The Lions' top two pairs both own records of 3-2.
UAB, facing the same field of opponents as UNA, lost to the same ranked opponents and the Lions while winning against both CSUB and SLU. Senior Olivia Chychrun won three times on opening weekend to reach the 50-win mark for her career.
HCU heads north to Fort Worth, Texas next weekend for the TCU Invitational, facing the defending national champion Horned Frogs, Florida Gulf Coast and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi twice.
