Weekend in Preview: Beach volleyball looks to continue streak, rowing follows up LMU sweep

Rowing
Nicholas Yekikian, assistant Sports editor

After every Bruin boat won its race in last weekend’s scrimmage against Loyola Marymount University, UCLA rowing will take on Oregon State on Saturday.

This will be the first time the Beavers will have seen competition in over four months. At the Head of Lake competition in early November, Oregon State’s varsity eight boat took home a fifth-place finish.

However, at that event the boat ran a 3-mile course in 18 minutes and 14.835 seconds.

When the Beavers re-enter competition this weekend at Marina Del Rey, California, they will be racing distances that are significantly shorter than that, running races of either 1,500 or 2,000 meters.

Last week, junior varsity eight coxswain Gray Strandberg said she thinks the team needed to work on its pace and number of strokes in a race. This week they’ll have the chance to make those adjustments against Oregon State.

Beach volleyball
Armando Carrillo, Daily Bruin contributor

The Bruins will play three teams on the same day Saturday, hoping to add to their six-match winning streak.

No. 2 UCLA beach volleyball (11-3) will face Missouri State (4-3), Colorado Mesa (2-5) and No. 16 Loyola Marymount (4-4) at the LMU Invitational at Ocean Park Beach in Santa Monica.

UCLA boasts recent wins over then-No. 3 Hawai’i and then-No. 5 Florida State. On Thursday, UCLA defeated Loyola Marymount in a 5-0 sweep.

“I’m very confident that we can beat any team on any given day,” said coach Stein Metzger. “At the same time, Hawai’i, who … beat us when we were at their home in Hawaii, almost lost to LMU on that same day that we swept them. So we really can’t take anybody lightly.”

The winds in Santa Monica are expected to reach around 14 mph, which Metzger said could be a factor in the matches.

“I actually hope that we see some wind,” Metzger said. “I think we’ve spent a fair bit of time going down to the beach and training for the wind, and we’d like to continue doing that.”

Junior Izzy Carey and freshman Megan Muret went 6-0 last week and were named the Pac-12 Pair of the Week. The duo will try to continue their win streak just as the team tries do the same as a whole.

“We’re going to continue to work on areas where we can get better this week,” Metzger said. “And just be as prepared as possible for this weekend because we want to continue our streak of wins.”

Women’s water polo
Claire Britton, Daily Bruin contributor

When UCLA faced San Jose State last season, the Bruins took down the Spartans 24-2 – their biggest margin of victory of the season.

No. 4 UCLA women’s water polo (17-3, 0-1 MPSF) will play against No. 21 San Jose State (5-11) at home this weekend.

Last weekend, the Bruins faced off against two top-10 teams. UCLA left the weekend with a loss to No. 1 California but a win over No. 8 Pacific.

“We have been focusing a lot on being stronger, mentally and physically,” said sophomore attacker Brooke Maxson. “I think we are pushing our conditioning pretty hard so that we can be ready to compete at any level.”

Coach Adam Wright said it’s important to keep the intensity the same, something they have been working hard at obtaining over the season.

“A lot of the times after you have a loss it’s easy to have good attention and focus,” Wright said. “Our goal here is we don’t wanna come back and train harder after a loss – we want to be the same.”

A continuous trend in the Bruins’ practice schedule has been to work on their 5-on-6 and their 6-on-5, two things that Wright believes are still a struggle for the team.

“We can play the right way, but that takes great concentration, and we are not there yet,” Wright said. “We will try and work on playing with higher energy but that’s on us to create the drills.”