MONROE, La. – One week after competing at the Battle on the Bayou in Baton Rouge, earning wins over Spring Hill and Central Arkansas in the process, the ULM beach volleyball heads to Birmingham, Alabama to conclude the regular season at the Blazer Beach Bash, hosted by UAB.
ULM (13-17, 2-9 CCSA) opens the tournament with a pair of matches against Central Arkansas and Mercer on Friday at 12 p.m. and 4 p.m., respectively. The Warhawks return to the court on Saturday to face off against Coastal Carolina at 10 a.m. before going head-to-head with the host Blazers at 4 p.m. The match with UAB is a Coastal Collegiate Sports Association match for the Warhawks.
After winning four of five games for the Warhawks last weekend,
Audrey Brooks and
Julia Blazek tied teammates
Kayla Gallant and Abbie Elder for the most wins on the team with 18. The duo of Brooks and Blazek, the Warhawks top-seeded team throughout the season, won three of those matches in two sets, with the lone three-set victory coming against the Spring Hill tandem of Kassandra Fairly and Payton Gidney.
Gallant and Elder claimed their first win of the weekend against Spring Hill's tandem of Sarah Senft and Mikayla Boyer before picking up a two-set victory over Kelsie Sager and Makenna Schmitt from Central Arkansas the following day.
Katie McKay and
Anna Demmer remain the third-winningest pair for the Warhawks this season, taking 15 victories. They earned three wins last weekend. Two of those three wins came as the No. 3 seed for ULM, which came against competition from New Orleans and Spring Hill, while the other came against the No. 2 Central Arkansas pairing of Faith Hasness and Evelyn Griffith.
Abbey Bufkin and
Elizabeth Moreland are fourth, winning 11 games along the way.
Central Arkansas (15-12): This weekend marks the fourth meeting between the Warhawks and Central Arkansas this season with ULM holding a 2-1 advantage in the 2021 series. The Bears lead the all-time series by a 7-3 margin and had not dropped two matches in a season series to ULM until this year. Central Arkansas has lost its last four matches since suffering a 5-0 setback to No. 4 LSU on April 9. The other losses came to Spring Hill, ULM and New Orleans.
Mercer (9-12): This weekend marks the first meeting between ULM and Mercer since the 2018 season when the two clashed at the Diggin' Duals in Atlanta, hosted by Georgia State. The Bears have won two of the three head-to-head matches between the two, but ULM won the last outing in 2018 by a 3-2 margin. The Bears last competed at the Eckerd Invitational in St. Petersburg, Florida on April 10, losing two of three matches in the tournament to Florida Gulf Coast and Tampa while posting a 3-2 win over Eckerd.
Coastal Carolina (18-6): The Chanticleers put together an 11-match winning streak from March 20 through April 7 before dropping a pair of matches to No. 15 Florida International and No. 13 Florida Atlantic at the Florida State Tournament on April 9 and 10, respectively. Coastal Carolina is 8-2 at neutral site events this season and is 1-0 in the all-time series with the Warhawks. The lone meeting between the two came on February 29, 2020, with Coastal Carolina emerging 5-0.
UAB (9-12, 4-9 CCSA): This weekend marks the second and final regular season meeting of the two Coastal Collegiate Sports Association member programs. UAB earned a 4-1 win in the first match, which came earlier in the month at the Southern Miss Beach Invitational. The Blazers, who are 8-9 at neutral sites this season, have not played a match at home in 2021. UAB wrapped up the Southern Miss Tournament, the last time it took the court, with three wins in four matches.
