FORT WORTH, Texas – Warhawk beach volleyball found themselves on the losing side of the sand courts today, defeated by #11 Florida International (4-1) and Houston Baptist (4-1) on day one (Feb 24) of the TCU Invitational.

"I'm really proud of this team after today," said head coach Russ Friedland. "It turned into a long day after the changes due to the weather, and we played hard. It's one of the things we talked about weekly leading up to today, the importance of playing hard and winning long rallies, and I think we saw some of that today."

ULM was originally set to play early Saturday morning, but was delayed because of the inclement weather.

"HBU and FIU are really good teams and well coached and deserve a ton of credit. There's no better way to kick off the season than against high level competition to see where we stand and what skills we need to improve on," Friedland said.

The only Warhawks to win on the day were graduate student Rebecca Brown and junior Catherine Griffith. The pairs defeated #11 FIU's Lina Bernier and Erika Zembyla (21-19, 12-21, 15-11) and HBU's Bailey Banks and Katya Silveira (21-19, 26-24).

"Becca & Cat played really well and were able to knock off both HBU and #11 FIU today. There were a lot of great moments from all six pairs today which is promising," said Friedland. "We now need to string together those moments play a complete match. We will have that opportunity tomorrow and I'm excited to see how the team responds."

Young duo, sophomore Holland Ponthieux and freshman McKenna Webster, took Houston Baptist's Megan Carter and Kali Fluke to a third set. Ponthieux and Webster fell to the Huskies 17-21 before coming back to win 23-21. The Warhawks were unable to claim the third set and fell to Carter and Fluke 15-10.

The Warhawks fall to 0-2 on the season overall, ULM is scheduled to face host team No.13 TCU tomorrow (Feb 25) at 1 p.m.