Women’s Beach Volleyball Demolishes NCAA Opponents

The Lady Flames beach volleyball club team opened the LU Beach NCAA Duals April 17 with a sweep of the Stevenson Mustangs and Spartanburg Methodist Junior College, winning both matches 5-0.  

The Liberty pairs dominated the sand early in the morning against Stevenson, winning all but two games in under three matches.  The NCAA Division III Mustangs kept it competitive, however, throughout most of the matches. 

Lady Flames Head Coach Kaleb VanDePerre said he was pleased with his team’s performance as they balanced control with aggression to leave the sand with a handful of wins.

“I thought we did great this morning,” VanDePerre said. “I thought we came out and did a lot of things that we’ve been working on in practice. We kind of controlled (our) serves and stayed aggressive offensively.”

VanDePerre emphasized an intense approach for the morning matchup with the Mustangs in order to set the tone for the rest of the weekend’s duels. 

“(We wanted to) play aggressively, but with … calculated risk,” VanDePerre said about the team’s plan for the matchup. “We want to know when we’re taking risks and making errors, or when it’s better to just control the ball and keep ourselves alive. We served aggressively, and defense turned into offense.”

The game plan paid off as several doubles teams won handily in their respective matchups. Even in the three-game matchups, the pairs were able to pull off wins to get a complete sweep of the Stevenson Mustangs. 

“The courts that went three, I think they were able to shake off losses in the second set,” VanDePerre said. “They were able to refocus on what they were doing well, where they found their success and just kind of control the aggression and roll from there.”

This was the Lady Flames’ second sweep of the Stevenson Mustangs this season. The rest of the LU Beach NCAA Duals will give the team an opportunity to play NCAA programs in order to see how the club team matches up with NCAA programs.

Earlier this season, the Lady Flames earned their first-ever win over an NCAA Division II program when they pulled off an upset against Erskine College in the season opener. The team followed that achievement with another program first when it played against two NCAA Division I programs for the first time in program history at an event hosted by UNC Wilmington that featured a combination of NCAA and club teams.

“It’s been awesome for us this year playing a lot of these official NCAA, NAIA and junior college teams,” VanDePerre said. “(We get to) see where we stack up against them and how we can continue to get better. It has helped us to take a step forward in our vision of building the program.”

Liberty’s women beach volleyball team will finish up its season April 24 when it hosts Tusculum, another NCAA DII program. 

“We’re playing teams we’ve never played the rest of the way out,” VanDePerre said about the end of the season. “It’ll be cool to see someone new, and we can adjust in-game versus kind of knowing our opponents before we play.”

Sarah Tate is a Sports Reporter. Follow her on Instagram at @state2151.