Ebere and Wood win four matches at USC fall opener, but lose in the round of 16
Latvian beach volleyball player Liva Ebere and American Sara Wood, representing the University of Southern California (USC), reached the round of 16 in the knockout stage at the opening tournament of the US college fall season.
At a US college beach volleyball tournament opening the fall season, the top pair of the University of Southern California (USC) team, Latvian Liva Ebere and American Sara Wood, reached the round of 16 of the knockout stage. There they lost to another pair from Stanford University.
Day two
The duo won three matches on the first day. On the second day they first beat Stanford players 21:13, 21:18. In the second set Ebere and Wood briefly trailed 14:15, but Ebere served an ace to make it 16:15. On the next rally Wood made a defensive play to secure 17:15, and Ebere again scored the final point.
The next match against LBSU went poorly, a loss by 17:21 and 11:21. The first round of the knockout stage used an unusual format (11:9, 6:10, 9:8), and the pair beat a team from the University of California ("Cal"). In the round of 16 the Latvian-American duo lost to another Stanford team, 18:21, 21:12, 10:15.
Day three
On the third day, consolation matches were played. Ebere and Wood beat a Cal Poly pair (12:21, 21:19, 15:12) and a Florida State duo (21:18, 21:16). They finished the tournament with an ace from Ebere.
In the gold-medal match, USC's fourth-strongest pair, Madison Gelner and Zoya Henson, beat Texas's top pair, Austria's Lia Berger and the Netherlands' Brecht Pierce, by 21:14, 23:25, 15:13.
Tactics
Throughout the tournament, Ebere and Wood followed one pattern: when one served, the other played as the blocker. The Latvian spent long stretches as the blocker and collected many blocks, while the 188-centimetre-tall American played a lot of defence, and did so quite well.
The USC beach team has won seven titles (2015, 2016, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024) at the US collegiate championship. Latvian Tina Graudina was part of the squad for two of them, in 2021 and 2022.
