“We knew it was not going to be an easy day,” ASU head coach Kristen Glattfelder said. “I was proud of the way that we came out right off the bat.”

The Sun Devils (6-0) defeated both teams, 5-0, in the Cactus Classic at Bear Down Beach, the home of the Arizona Wildcats (4-2). Georgia State (4-3) struggled to compete against ASU as all matches ended in two sets. 

ASU graduate student Reagan Hope and her partner, graduate student Daniella Kensinger, dominated in their first matchup against the Georgia State Panthers. The duo kept the Panthers under 10 points in both sets and clinched the first point of the dual.  

The pair was also the first team to score against the Arizona Wildcats for ASU. 

“We just went out hard,” Kensinger said. “We played strong against Georgia State, me and Reagan, we had success from the get go.” 

However, things were not as easy for the Sun Devils against the Wildcats. 

All matches except senior McKenna Flaherty and her partner, junior Kristin Gilmour, went into three sets. In each set of the duos game, the score went over 21 points. 

The Wildcats came out in each match ready to dominate. 

“We persevered against the U of A,” Kensinger said. “They came back in the second, they gave us a struggle in the third until we came out on top. Major swings from Reagan, major blocks from Reagan, she played great defense and that honestly gave us the win in the end.”

Arizona’s junior Brooke Boyko and her partner, sophomore Sadie Moore, took charge of the match in their first set against the Sun Devils, keeping them in a nine-point difference. 

Nonetheless, senior Kendall Whitmarsh and her partner junior Olivia McElroy quickly turned things around with strong defense and placed the ball in open sand, winning the match in three. 

McElroy started her freshman year with the Wildcats and later transferred to the Sun Devils as a sophomore.

“It is definitely not fun to lose the first set,” Whitmarsh said. “My partner, she transferred from the U of A a few years ago, so there was definitely that motivator behind us. Sometime in the second set she just looked at me and was like ‘we are not losing this’ and I said ‘you’re right, we are not losing this.’”

Despite the Wildcats putting up a fight, the Sun Devils walked away with major comebacks across all five courts. 

“They always play their best against us and they always push us to our limits,” Glattfelder said. “We talked about being so proud of our team for not giving up or letting down or taking their foot off the gas at any point. We just stayed true to ourselves.”