HBU beach volleyball comes up short against No. 2 Florida State

Photo by Darla Tamulitis, La Vita Loca Photography
Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved.

By Robert H Kelly
Copyright 2016 TexSportPublications

FORT WORTH, TEXAS (March 19, 2016) The Houston Baptist University beach volleyball team dropped their first match of the 2016 season with a 5-0 loss to the No. 2 Florida State Seminoles in the Fight at the Fort tournament at the TCU Beach Volleyball Courts in Fort Worth, Texas on Saturday, March 19, 2016. In the best three-out-of-five match, the Huskies dropped all five sets in two games.

Both duos of Guinevere Meyer and Haley Durham and Hailey Erickson and Laura Fox dropped their sets by identical scores of 21-13, 21-14 to their Florida State opponents. Meyer and Durham fell to Eva Torruella and Brooke Kuhlman while Erickson and Fox lost to Katherine Plessy and Ali Eager.

Photo by Darla Tamulitis, La Vita Loca Photography
Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved.

The HBU pair of Madison O’Brien and Bailey Banks dropped a 21-11, 21-12 decision to the Seminoles’ Tori Paranagua and Nona Pelletier. Fellow Huskies Ashlee Vann and Melissa Fuchs came up short in their set by the same score against Nikki Esposito and Haley Luke. In the fifth match, Jessica Wooten and Aeriel Horton lost 21-4, 21-8 to Jace Pardon and Julie Brown.

Florida State finished the 2015 season with a 13-6 record and a tie for seventh finish at the AVCA Sand Volleyball National Championships. 2016 is their fifth year of competition. They will next face the TCU Horned Frogs in the second round of the tournament. Next up for the Huskies is a Saturday afternoon matchup against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. The Islanders dropped a 5-0 decision to host TCU to go to 0-3 for the season. With the win, the Horned Frogs raised their season record to 5-2.