(Photo courtesy Sun Devil Athletics)
After a week off, the Arizona State Women’s Beach Volleyball will end its regular season slate with a pair of solo duals. The Sun Devils will start the week with a trip down to Tucson taking on Territorial Cup rival No. 19 Arizona, Thursday April 18 before heading back home for senior day against Ottawa (AZ) the following day.
Before last week’s bye week, the No. 13 Sand Devils (18-6, 5-1 Pac-12) had an extremely polarizing weekend up in Seattle. The Pac-12 North Tournament saw the team drop both its matches on the first day to No. 3 USC and No. 13 Washington respectively, before sweeping each match the following day and slicing up Utah and Oregon to close out the tournament weekend.
Despite struggling early on in Seattle, Sun Devil head coach Kristen Rohr saw a lot of value in the experience and thinks it was a great learning lesson for her squad.
“We talked a lot that weekend about being tough because we were coming from 80-degree weather – and it was cold, it was windy, it was rainy,” Rohr said. “We just talked about how nothing this season, especially the rest of this year, is going to be easy. They’re gonna have to fight for everything, they’re gonna have a target on their back, and people are going to wanna beat them. So, I’m proud of the way we came back.”
The Sun Devils will look to apply the hard lessons learned on the road from the Pac-12 North Tournament to their quick, hour-and-a-half road trip down south to pay a visit to fellow in-state rival.
Although the program trails in the all-time series with Arizona, 8-17, the two foes have already matched up this season, with the Sun Devils taking home a 3-2 win to close out the Pac-12 South Tournament.
Rohr knows that the Wildcats are going to be seeking revenge and aiming to even the season series. The goal for Rohr is to enter the game with an aggressive mindset, and hope to take the life out of the raucous home crowd that is expected by the Arizona faithful.
“We want to go in and give no hope and just really show the growth that we’ve had over the course of the season,” Rohr said. “(We) understand that it’s gonna be a battle and they are going to come out fighting.”
Dominating in Tucson will certainly not be an easy task for the Sun Devils, at the very least. The Sand Cats are undefeated so far this season at Bear Down Beach, holding onto an 11-0 record.
Most recently, Arizona is coming off a weekend that saw them play in two different cities. In each location, the Wildcats finished with a 1-1 record. They beat Saint Mary’s but lost to Boise State in the Boise State Tri-Duel. Afterward, the team zipped out to Palo Alto two days later to eventually lose to No. 3 Stanford before avenging the loss and dominating Pacific in sweeping fashion.
The Sun Devils will have a quick turnaround from the Arizona match on Thursday in Tucson to senior night in Tempe on Friday.
The Ottawa (AZ) Spirit are ranked No. 1 in the nation in the NAIA and are coming off an impressive outing last weekend. They made it all the way to the finals of the GSAC Beach Volleyball Championships before finally losing in the title contest to Vanguard.
ASU will be celebrating graduate Lexi Sweeney and seniors Taryn Ames, Kate Fitzgerald and Ivey Weber on Friday night. Ames and Sweeney are putting the finishing touches on remarkable careers at ASU, as they are tied for fifth in number of career wins in Sun Devil history, coming in at 57 to date.
“Change is never easy,” Rohr said. “Those ladies have been here for the past three years and here I come in and change a lot and teach a lot of new things. They just from day one have been really bought in.
This willingness to work under a first year head coach in Rohr has helped get the program to one of the highest spots in the program’s history, and in the end has begun a positive trajectory that can be followed for years to come.
“They were really adamant about wanting to work hard, wanting to be pushed and wanting to go out this year making this program and this team the best they could,” Rohr said. “And they have all been a huge part of that.”
