After a first round win against Utah at the Pac-12 Women’s Beach Volleyball Championships in Los Angeles, a pair of top-15 matchups against USC and Cal proved to be too much for the Ducks to handle. 

Still, despite the early exit, there’s a lot for the Oregon women’s beach volleyball program to be proud of. 

The Ducks came out strong against the Utes on day one. After losing at the No. 2 spot, Bea Wetton and Ashley Shroeder set the tone with a straight-sets win, 21-14, 21-14. 

Savannah Siegrist and Delaney Hopen followed it up with a dominant straight-sets win of their own, winning 21-11, 21-12 out of the No. 5 spot. 

But the Utes wouldn’t go down without a fight. With a win out of the No. 1 spot, they forced a winner-take-all situation in the No. 3 spot. 

Zoe Almanza and Vivian Donovan took the first set, while the Utes took the second. In the third set, a 10-5 Utah run allowed them to reach match point, but Almanza and Donovan fired off three straight points to take the set and cement a 3-2 Oregon victory.

The win marked just the program’s second ever in the Pac-12 championships, but the nation’s top program, USC, still stood in the way. 

The Trojans took the first two matches convincingly, outscoring Oregon 84-40. In the third match, with a trip to the loser’s bracket on the line, USC continued its dominance with a 21-9, 21-10 win. Oregon’s only chance of survival in the tournament relied on a match against Cal, the eleventh ranked team in the nation.

Like the USC match, the heavyweight Golden Bears flexed their muscles early and often. 

Almanza and Donovan gave Cal a fight, winning the first set of their match 21-16. Cal rebounded nicely, taking the next two sets 21-14, 15-12 to take a 1-0 advantage. 

Siegrest and Hopen made things interesting in the No. 5 spot, but they fell 21-12, 21-16. The fate of Oregon’s season rested on the shoulders of Madelyn LaFollette and Carly Wallace, but the ending wasn’t something anyone wanted to see. 

With the pair down 8-3 in the second set, Wallace suffered an injury and wasn’t able to continue, allowing Cal to claim the 3-0 victory and ending Oregon’s season.

The Ducks finished the season 8-11. Although those numbers don’t jump off the page, it marked a single-reason record in wins in program history. 

With a young roster and a program on rise, this won’t be the last postseason appearance for Oregon beach volleyball.