When beach volleyball became an NCAA sport last fall, it came with a few perks.
One of those will come starting Thursday in Los Angeles at the inaugural Pac-12 Championships. Eight Pac-12 teams will compete in the events, first in a pairs then a team competition.
“I think it’ll be great for our kids to finally get a Pac-12 championship and go and represent, since we don’t do that for indoor,” third-year head coach Stacy Metro said. “At least for beach, they’ll get that just like everybody else does.”
Kacey Nady and Liz Brenner along with Oregon’s duo of Lindsey Vander Weide and Martenne Bettendorf will compete in pairs competition on Thursday. No. 15-seeded Vander Weide/Bettendorf will face Arizona’s Madison and McKenna Witt (17-1) in first-round action.
Nady/Brenner earned the No. 12 seed against USC’s Sophie Bukovec and Alexa Strange, the No. 5 pair. The USC tandem owns a 22-6 record together this season.
Team competition will begin on Friday when eighth-seeded Oregon plays USC. The Trojans are ranked No. 1 nationally and boast a 26-2 record. First-round losers will play again on Saturday in the competition bracket. The Ducks knocked off the Pac-12’s six seed in Stanford earlier this season 3-2.
Although the Ducks have a 2-8 record, one bright spot has come in the No. 4 spot from Lauren Page and Maddy Silberger-Franek, a freshman walk-on from Portland. The duo has a 4-4 overall record, the best on the team.
“Lauren’s had to learn a lot about the sand. Mostly it’s up here for both of them,” Metro said as she pointed to her head. “They’ve had to learn to play together.”
Page said the team embraced Silberger-Franek as the team’s lone non-indoor player.
“We’ve accepted her for who she is,” Page said. “She fits in perfectly.”
The Ducks competed last week indoors at Matthew Knight Arena, but have moved outside ahead of the Pac-12 Championships this week.
“The administration has made indoor a priority, obviously,” Metro said. “Outdoor – they’re learning. The more kids I can get where I don’t have to worry about this is what we want to do.”
Metro said she keeps the outdoor mood relaxed, so as not to add extra stress to players switching between the two mediums.
Nady, who along with Brenner has an 3-6 record at the No. 1 spot, said she expects tough matches in the inaugural event.
“Of course I expect us to win it,” Nady said. “We have really tough competition with USC and Cal. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t fight to win. I know they’re pretty much all beach-only teams, but I think we’ve gotten a lot better.
“The improvements we’ve made are night and day.”
Nady said part of the appeal of beach volleyball is that everyone is connected in the match.
“It’s exciting because each team is important,” Nady said. “It doesn’t really matter if the Nos. 1 or 2 are winning. We can’t do it without the 3, 4 or 5s.”
The Ducks will likely meet one of the top teams in the nation in the opening round of Pac-12 team play. Three Pac-12 teams are ranked nationally: USC (No. 1), UCLA (No. 4) and Arizona (No. 6).
“The expectations for each team are exactly the same — minimize the errors as best you can,” Nady said.
Follow Jonathan Hawthorne on Twitter @Jon_Hawthorne