While the rest of the student body relaxed during spring break, UCLA beach volleyball remained busy at work.

No. 2 UCLA beach volleyball (22-2) continued its winning streak against No. 8 Hawai’i (22-6) with a 4-1 result on Wednesday at home, then took down No. 16 FIU (10-14) 5-0 and No. 5 LSU (18-8) 4-1 on Friday. UCLA’s lone loss of the weekend came Saturday against No. 4 Florida State (24-3) 3-2, but the Bruins redeemed the defeat by taking down No. 11 Georgia State (13-11) 3-2.

Junior Tessa Van Winkle said the busy week following UCLA’s finals was something the team had prepared for.

“It wasn’t necessarily that much of a tough adjustment with finals because our team is pretty good at preparing early going into it,” Van Winkle said. “We make sure to take advantage of any off time we have.”

The blue and gold then took a trip to the Manhattan Beach Pier to compete in the East Meets West Invitational, a tournament featuring multiple top 20 teams from each coast.

After back-to-back victories on Friday, Saturday brought UCLA’s first loss since falling to No. 3 USC on March 5th, at the hands of Florida State – the same team that ended UCLA’s NCAA tournament run in the semifinals last season – by just one point.

Coach Stein Metzger stressed the importance of a shift in mentality to move forward from the loss.

“It’s just mental,” Metzger said. “We need to get rid of expectations and show up ready to play, ready to take the game instead of waiting for someone to give it to us, because that’s not going to happen.”

Senior Rileigh Powers, who faced off against Florida State both in last year’s semifinals and Saturday’s game, said the loss powered the team’s drive coming into its next matchups.

“The loss (on May 8, 2022 to Florida State) definitely made us work a lot harder in practice. A lot more intentional with our mentality and what we’re doing in the weight room,” Powers said. “And honestly, the loss, it sounds really bad, but it just made us work harder in the long run.”

Powers and her partner, graduate student Haley Hallgren, sealed their part of the victory decisively, trumping the Sandy Panthers in their two sets with scores of 21-10 and 21-12.

Metzger said the team showed renewed determination in order to achieve their victory against Georgia State.

“They were motivated simply by the loss. I didn’t really need to get them that fired up,” Metzger said. “But the message was, we need to show up and play well. We’ve got a lot of talent, but so do other teams. We don’t show up and play well, we’re gonna get beat and that’s what happened. They turned around and played with a little more fight.”

This weekend’s tournament play marks three weeks from playoffs for the blue and gold, which Powers noted.

“This weekend was definitely a test, we’ve got a loss under our belt and that never feels good,” Powers said. “That just made us super hungry to get better and I think it was a wake up call. We’re on a time crunch, we got to work on a lot of things.”

For the Bruins, that includes more matchups against ranked opponents before the Pac-12 championship at the end of April.

UCLA returns next weekend to compete in the Pac-12 North Invitational at Stanford, facing off against No. 9 California and No. 10 Stanford on Friday and Washington and Arizona on Saturday.