The red-hot Chattanooga beach volleyball squad came, saw and conquered in the team’s final non-conference tournament of the 2025 season, with the Mocs leaving the Blazer Beach Bash a perfect 4-0 after sweeping their way through the competition.
Coming off an outing on Friday where UTC swept its way past Southeastern Louisiana and Austin Peay, the Sandy Mocs carried their momentum right into Saturday by landing two more 5-0 results against the likes of Missouri State and Tennessee Tech.
The Mocs leave Birmingham a perfect 20-0 in head-to-head results on the weekend while continuing to build upon the team’s program record for most sweep wins in a single season, which currently stands at 14 on the year.
Chattanooga now turns its attention to the final week of its regular season, where the Ohio Valley Conference regular season title hangs in the balance. The Mocs are set to head to the second and final OVC Weekend of the year in Morehead, Kentucky, where they will take on Tennessee Tech, Lindenwood, Eastern Illinois and Morehead State on April 18-19.
Currently a game up on Morehead State for first place in the conference, the earliest that the Mocs could clinch at least a share of the OVC regular season crown would be on Friday with a pair of wins alongside two losses by MSU.
Chattanooga vs Missouri State – W, 5-0
The first domino to fall for Chattanooga to continue the team’s trend of sweeping its way through the Balzer Beach Bash competition was none other than Joy Courtright and Julia Lawrence, who stacked clean sets of 21-19, 21-14 on Court 4 to get the Mocs on the board.
In a battle of wills on Court 2, McKenna Faychak and Maddie Lecik were second to finish and began the point tug-of-war with Missouri’s MacKenzie Steele and Amanda Cleary with a 21-17 win to open the match. The second set then proved to be an entertaining one that eventually saw Steele and Cleary emerge with a tightly contested 28-26 victory to force the third set.
Although exhausted, Faychak and Lecik were determined to keep the perfect sweep of the weekend alive and persevered in a hard-fought 15-13 third frame to move UTC head 2-0.
Ansley Gulledge and Sydney Jackwin then provided an all-too-familiar straight-set win for the Mocs in the No. 5 spot, ending their match with 21-16, 21-15 efforts and clinching a W over a Missouri State squad that had defeated UTC earlier this season.
With veteran efforts shimmering through as icing on the cake, Kit Gresham and Paige Gallentine made clear how things were going to go with repeated 21-15 wins over the Bears’ Court 3 pairing to move the score to 4-0 in favor of the Mocs.
In an epic finale, all the weight of a third consecutive sweep ultimately fell on Chattanooga’s Court 1 duo of Neva Clark and Corina Vale, who initially made swift work of their opponents in Becca Bach and Allyson Larkin with a 21-14 victory in the first set. The atmosphere got increasingly tense as Bach and Larkin pulled together a winning set and caused a climactic finish in the third frame.
Clark and Vale kept their poker faces and stayed the course, and the UTC duo ended up cruising through the third set 15-7 to clinch Chattanooga’s third-straight sweep of the weekend.
1. Neva Clark/Corina Vale (UTC) def. Becca Bach/ Allyson Larkin (MSU) 21-14, 19-21, 15-7
2. McKenna Faychak/Maddie Lecik (UTC) def. MacKenzie Steele/ Amanda Cleary (MSU) 21-17, 26-28, 15-13
3. Paige Gallentine/Kit Gresham (UTC) def. Morgan Sprague/ Maddie Schrandt (MSU) 21-15, 21-15
4. Joy Courtright/Julia Lawrence (UTC) def. Rylie Cepicky/ Manuela Niemeyer (MSU) 21-19, 21-14
5. Ansley Gulledge/Sydney Jackwin (UTC) def. Olivia Rattler/ Erin Eschleman (MSU) 21-16, 21-15
Order of finish: 4, 2, 5, 3, 1
Chattanooga vs Tennessee Tech – W, 5-0
After securing the third perfect match in a row to make their weekend outing 15-0 thus far, all eyes were on the Sandy Mocs as they squared up against a familiar foe in the Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles.
Gulledge and Jackwin picked up right where they had left off on Court 5, showing up stout versus Tech’s Ava Shubert and Emma Pabon with outings of 21-15 and 21-10 to give UTC the lead. Gulledge and Jackwin officially finished their time in Birmingham as one of only two Chattanooga pairs that failed to drop a single set during their time at the Blazer Beach Bash.
The other pair that failed to drop a set this weekend? That would be UTC’s Court 4 duo of Joy Courtright and Julia Lawrence who closed out their weekend with a 21-12, 22-20 result to clinch the win over Tennessee Tech. The win also marked Courtright and Lawrence’s 11 consecutive win for the Sandy Mocs.
Sandwiched between UTC’s Court 5 and Court 4 victories was a 21-10, 21-11 result for Neva Clark and Corina Vale on Court 1, completing an impressive outing for the top flight pair of the Mocs.
Gresham and Gallentine then stepped up big against the Golden Eagles’ MK Roberts and Aleeya Jones in the No. 4 slot, winning both sets 21-16, 21-14 to move the team one point away from a fourth consecutive sweep.
The Mocs wouldn’t have to wait much longer before breaking out the brooms one last time in Birmingham, as Faychak/Lecik strung together 26-24, 21-15 results to seal the team’s program record 14th sweep victory of the season over TTU.
Chattanooga ends its time in Birmingham a perfect 20-0 as a team, with only five of those matches requiring three sets before the Mocs clinched a win. It’s also important to note that UTC’s final match of the weekend against Tennessee Tech, which did not count towards either teams’ OVC record, saw the Mocs win all five matches in straight-sets.
1. Neva Clark/Corina Vale (UTC) def. Jordan Karlen/ Bella Powell (TTU) 21-10, 21-11
2. McKenna Faychak/Maddie Lecik (UTC) def. Brooke Amann/ Alayna Pierce (TTU) 26-24, 21-15
3. Paige Gallentine/Kit Gresham (UTC) def. MK Roberts/ Aleeya Jones (TTU) 21-16, 21-14
4. Joy Courtright/Julia Lawrence (UTC) def. Jazmine Yamilkoski/ McKenna Young (TTU) 21-12, 22-20
5. Ansley Gulledge/Sydney Jackwin (UTC) def. Ava Schubert/ Emma Pabon (TTU) 21-15, 21-10
Order of finish: 5, 1, 4, 3, 2