- Former Mira Costa standout Kendall Bateman was a member of USC’s squad at the USA Volleyball Beach Collegiate Championships held in Hermosa Beach. Photo
Highly recruited after leading Mira Costa’s girls indoor volleyball team to a 37-0 record and a national championship 2007, Kendall Bateman and Stevi Robinson believed their collegiate careers would end four years later at the conclusion of the fall season.
Playing for USC, Bateman went on to become one of the top Trojan setters of all time, twice earning All-American honors while setting the school record for career assists. Robinson was a four-time All-WCC honorable mention libero at Pepperdine, setting the school record for digs with 1,750.
But the statistical accomplishments won’t be the only mention of the two seniors in the record books. Both are members of their school’s first women’s sand volleyball team which recently concluded the inaugural regular season as an NCAA sport.
Bateman and Robinson returned to the South Bay last weekend when Pepperdine and USC joined Loyola Marymount, Long Beach State and Hawaii in the Fourth Annual USA Volleyball Collegiate Challenge held in Hermosa Beach.
On Saturday, each of the school’s top five pairs competed against each other. Bateman, of Manhattan Beach, teamed with freshman Eve Ettinger (Santa Barbara) as USC’s No. 4 team. Robinson, of Hermosa Beach, joined with sophomore Kelley Larsen (Jamul) as Pepperdine’s No. 3 team.
Robinson and Larsen went undefeated advancing to the Gold Division flighted pairs competition on Sunday where they finished tied for 5th place.
Bateman’s team went 2-2 on Saturday with wins against LMU and Hawaii and competed in the Silver Division finishing 21st overall.
After Pepperdine swept the team competition on Saturday, it was an all-Wave showdown for the pair’s title with Caitlyn Racich/Summer Ross defeating Lilla Fredrick/Kim Hill in a close 21-14, 18-21, 16-14 match.
Hermosa Beach resident Ali Lamberson is the Director of International and High Performance Beach Programs for USA Volleyball, planning and overseeing all aspects of support and development for USAV’s Olympic, Pan Am, and Youth and Junior Beach athletes.
She competed on pro beach volleyball tours from 1992-2005 and was delighted to see how many indoor players made the transition to the sand.
“It turned out to be an awesome event and I am so impressed with the level of play top to bottom,” Lamberson said. “The first two years it was a fun spring event for the indoor players. Now it is a full-fledged tournament that is taken seriously.”
After the tournament, the AVCA National Championship Selection Committee announced that Pepperdine, Long Beach State, Florida State University and College of Charleston have been selected to compete in the first Collegiate Sand Volleyball National Championship.
The event will be held in Gulf Shores, Alabama, April 27-29 and will also feature a sixteen-team Pairs Championship. The Pairs competition includes the top doubles team from USC, the University of Hawaii, Florida Atlantic University, the University of Alabama-Birmingham, the University of North Florida and Stetson University, as well as the number one and two duos from the schools in the team championship. Teams and pairs were selected based on results from the first collegiate season of competition which began in March.
Mira Costa, perennial power in the indoor game, will be well represented with three former Mustangs competing in the sand volleyball tournament. Along with Pepperdine’s Robinson, Florida State freshman Jace Pardon and College of Charleston freshman Andi Zbojniewicz will help their respective schools battle for the national title.
Lamberson expects Pepperdine and Florida State to emerge as the top teams.
“Pepperdine has a deep team,” Lamberson said. “Its No. 5 team can beat the No. 3 team from most schools.”
Lamberson knows how strong the Florida State program is. The head coach of the Seminoles is Danalee Corso, a former partner of Lamberson’s on the professional beach volleyball circuit. The two earned a fifth-place finish at the 2001 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship in Austria.
Corso and her husband Brian ran the Aloha Beach Club program in Hermosa Beach until she accepted the Florida State job when the family – and club – moved to Tallahassee.
Danalee helped coach the United States National Beach Volleyball Team from 2004-07 concentrating on the team of Rachel Wacholder and Tyra Turner. She has also coached 2008 Summer Games Olympian Nicole Branagh as well as professionals Michelle More, Suzanne Stonebarger and Makare Wilson.
CBS Sports Network will televise portions of the competition in two hour-long specials on Wednesdays, June 6 and 13 at 6 p.m.
“When we joined with CBS Sports Network in 2005 to create the first-ever collegiate sand volleyball championship, this day was just a distant dream. It’s exciting that this partnership continues,” said AVCA Executive Director, Kathy DeBoer. “Once the NCAA voted to make sand volleyball an emerging sport, we could see the potential was unlimited. This field is deep, with good geographical representation. These two championships will showcase the high level of play that is already part of the collegiate landscape.”
