What was once a promising championship run came to an abrupt end after the eighth-ranked Hawaii Rainbow Wahine dropped back-to-back upset matches to crash out of the 2023 Big West Conference Beach Volleyball Championships.

“We’re hurting right now,” UH coach Evan Silberstein said after the team was eliminated. “There was a lot of expectations about how we were going to perform today. Under the critical pressure, we didn’t quite get it done.”

The top-seeded BeachBows were pushed to the brink by two seed and No. 11 Long Beach State and defending champion Cal Poly, losing 3-2 to both teams in matches that were decided by a three-set dual.

“We put ourselves in positions to win, and that was a good thing. We were just under in a couple of key moments,” Silberstein said. “It’s a very close beach. It’s been that way all season, and we’ve been able to prevail in the close moments. But today, I don’t know if it was the heat, or the nerves, or the expectation and hope that we were gonna get the championship done at home. We didn’t respond well in the biggest pressure moments. And in the end that was what decided the duals.”

Long Beach State drew first blood with back-to-back sweeps to begin the semifinal matchup. LBSU’s Maggie Walters and Christine Deroos took down UH’s Sarah Burton and Lea Kruse 21-14, 21-14 at the No. 4 court. Long Beach State’s No. 5 pair Mari Molina and Emily Matton beat UH duo Chandler Cowell and Sydney Miller 21-15, 21-11 to give the Beach an early 2-0 lead.

The BeachBows took back a point at the No. 3 court. Kylin Loker and Riley Wagoner swept LBSU duo Sydney Stevens and Julia Westby 21-11, 21-18, leaving the outcome of the match down to the No. 1 and No. 3 courts

LBSU pair Malia Gementara and Taylor Hagenah got the better of UH pair Kaylee Glagau and Brooke Van Sickle in a three-set match at the No. 1 court. Van Sickle and Glagau won the first set 21-17, but the Beach recovered with a 21-19 win in Set 2. Set 3 went back-and-forth, with LBSU eventually emerging from the deadlock to win 16-14 and clinch the match.

With the match already decided, the BeachBows’ No. 3 pair Ilihia Huddleston and Jaime Santer defeated Megan Widener and Natalie Glenn 17-21, 21-13, 22-20.

The BeachBows took on Cal Poly in the elimination bracket final for a chance to get back to the championship match. In the second meeting of the tournament between the two teams, Cal Poly got its revenge for their day-one loss.

Hawaii held a promising 2-1 lead after three duals. Miller and Cowell swept Cal Poly’s Susie Lloyd and Margo Smith 21-7, 21-16 at the No. 5 court to start the rivalry match. Then the Mustangs’ No. 4 pair Emma Zuffelato and Kalee Graff beat UH’s Kruse and Burton 21-18, 21-19.

Van Sickle and Glagau gave UH the lead back at the No. 1 court by downing Piper Naess and Jayelin Lombard 21-16, 21-17.

Once again, the match was decided by the final two duals. With the 2-1 advantage, the magic number for the BeachBows to reach the championship was one win. Hawaii couldn’t get that win, dropping a pair of three-set heartbreakers.

At the No. 2 court, Loker and Wagoner dropped the first set against Cal Poly’s Piper Ferch and Izzy Martinez 21-18, then won the second 21-15. The duos battled early in the final set, but Ferch and Martinez used a late scoring run to secure a 15-9 win that tied the match up at 2-2.

No. 3 pair Santer and Huddleston won the first set 21-18 against Delaney Peranich and Brooke Golik but dropped the second set 21-19. The third set was tightly contested throughout, but Peranich and Golik broke through to score the final three points for a 15-12 win to send Cal Poly to the tournament finals.

Later in the afternoon, Long Beach State sailed to a 4-1 win over Cal Poly to secure its first ever Big West beach volleyball title, becoming just the third team to do so. The Beach previously finished as the runner-up to Hawaii in the first three years of the tournament.

Despite the heartbreaking result, Hawaii’s season is not over yet. With the early exit at the Big West Tournament, the BeachBows missed out on the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Championship in Alabama, one of nine automatic bids available. But with the field expanding to 17 teams this year, there will be eight at-large bids up for grabs on April 30. Entering the tournament as the eighth-ranked team in the nation, the BeachBows have a chance at one of those bids.

“Both of those losses are going to hurt us on record,” Silberstein said about the team’s at-large chances. They’ll both hurt us on some common opponent situations where we had advantages that may now start to shift. “Overall I believe our body of work, the wins that we’ve had this season, is going to be enough to get us in at that at-large. So we’ll have to wait and put it up to the committee. But hopefully we get that opportunity. We don’t want to be done at this point.”

Until the at-large bids are announced, the team is left to deal with the bitter disappointment of losing the tournament on their home turf.

“For now, some space to recover,” Silberstein said of next steps for the team. “This was a fast turn after senior weekend. It was a hot weekend. The teams that are here have played well, to their credit. They’re in the finals and we are not. We’ll take some time to relax and recover, look at the film, and get the athletes’ perspectives on what worked and what didn’t work, how well they made changes when they needed to, how well they kept themselves together in those key moments. And we move from there. We’re going to get back to practice on Monday and work to keep getting better and get ready for Alabama.”