The Oregon sand volleyball season comes and goes within the blink of an eye. Tomorrow, the Ducks will compete for the final time this season riding a two-game winning streak, hoping to improve upon their 2-4 record against Boise St. and No. 10 Arizona in Boise, Idaho.
Head coach Stacy Metro shared her thoughts on the Ducks’ 3-2 win over Oregon State and the expectations she has for the final day of the short season.
I guess, obviously the last day of competition for you guys, and coming off a win against Oregon State, does that just give your team a boost of confidence going into the weekend, especially against a tough test like Arizona? 
Arizona is really good. And Oregon State was great. They don’t practice it, but they were willing to give us a match, which was great. We were happy to go play there. I think, hopefully, it’ll entice their administration to start their sand volleyball program. So I think that’s kind of what the ultimate goal was to do that. Obviously beating Oregon State in anything is always fun, so you take it for what you can. It was fun. It got cold there. But, yeah. I think we’re looking forward to our last competition on Friday, so I think we’re just looking forward to getting it in and playing and going to a different place to play.
Do you have goals for tomorrow?
We beat Cal Poly and Cal Poly beat Boise, so you just never know. It kind of depends. We’re going to have different people playing this week Friday than we did Stanford. We’ve never had everybody the same, this whole time, so we’ll see. I think we have some good pairs together now. We’ll just kind of see how it goes.
Seeing Taylor Agost and Serena Warner pull out the win in the No. 2 spot against Oregon State, were you happy with what they were able to do?
I’m really happy with those two. We’ve had Taylor and Maggie (Scott) together, but we’ve been able to put Serena back in since she had to miss the Stanford Tournament. They seemed like they got along really well and did really well together. I’m anxious to kind of see how they play this weekend.
How much of it is you playing matchmaker and guessing to select the pairs?
You think you have an idea that somebody’s strengths can help somebody’s weaknesses and duh, duh, duh. But then they don’t mesh or they don’t help each other, or you just really never know. That’s the hard part about not being full time, is that they don’t have a lot of time together, so you really can’t see how they gel together. You think you have it, but they’ll change something differently. I think Frankie (Shebby) and Natalie (Bookout Gonzalez) have it, so we’re fine with that one—.
What do they have (Shebby and Bookout Gonzalez)? 
Just one compliments the other. They just don’t really take too much, they don’t put too much seriousness, not seriousness, but they don’t dislike each other too much. It’s kinda like ‘You mess up. I mess up. Just go.’ It’s a don’t blame each other kind of thing. It’s really easy to blame each other when you’re in doubles because you get frustrated and things like that.
Were you pleasantly surprised by their success this season?
It’s kind of funny. They just go about it. Like, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ And they’re like, ‘We got it. We’re fine.’
But, did you see them winning five in a row?
Playing at the four, we kind of moved them down, just because we just thought that would be better for them. We’ll see how they are. It all depends on match ups. You just don’t know what Cal Poly, if their match ups will be better, you just never know. Boise might be the same way. Arizona, you know. It just kinds of depends on their match ups. This weekend, Friday, is going to be a challenge for sure.
Roni (LaPierre) and Marine (Hall-Poirier)—they were 3-of-4 at Stanford—do you feel like like their loss against Oregon State was a fluke?
They felt they didn’t get to play very well. I didn’t get to watch them too much because I was running in between the three courts, and so I didn’t get to see them too much, but they came to me and said, ‘We just played horrible.’ I think they’re looking to redeem themselves this weekend.
Follow Jonathan Hawthorne on Twitter @Jon_Hawthorne