Beach Volleyball Travels South for CCCAA State Championships
CCCAA Beach Volleyball State Championships Tournament Central
The El Camino College beach volleyball team will participate in the CCCAA Beach Volleyball State Championships beginning Thursday at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif.
The Warriors will take part in the team competition for the first time in program history on Thursday after earning the No. 4 seed in Southern California and winning their regional over Cypress and Bakersfield. They are part of four teams from Southern California and two from Northern California taking part in the competition.
The field is broken up into two pools with the Warriors being placed as the No. 3 seed in Pool One. They are slotted with SoCal No. 1 Grossmont and NorCal No. 2 Gavilan. Pool 2 consists of NorCal No. 1 Sierra, SoCal No. 2 Long Beach and SoCal No. 3 Irvine Valley.
The Warriors begin the day on Thursday against Grossmont at 9 a.m. The Warriors and Griffins faced off once this season with Grossmont scoring a 4-1 victory in San Diego. At 11 a.m., the Warriors wrap up pool play against Gavilan College, a team they have never faced.
The winners of each pool will face off in the CCCAA State Championship match at approximately 4:30 p.m.
On Friday, the CCCAA Beach Volleyball Pairs State Championships get underway and the Warriors have sent three teams to compete.
The Warriors No. 2 squad and 2019 South Coast Conference Champions Phina Leilua and Kylee Glickman drew the highest seed of the three pairs for ECC, claiming the No. 9 slot from Southern California. Warriors' top pair Sophia Loiola and Caitlin Donatucci earned the No. 13 seed from SoCal. Lastly, Jessica Villasenor and Kelly Donatucci earned the No. 18 seed from SoCal for the weekend's action.
The competition gets underway on Friday with two waves. The first wave gets started at 8 a.m. with two of the Warriors three teams seeing action. Each wave features four pools with four teams apiece. The winners and runners up of each pool advance to bracket play on Saturday.
Leilua and Glickman fall into Pool 1 where the No. 1 SoCal seed resides. Villasenor and Kelly Donatucci are the lowest seeded team in Pool 2 where the No. 2 SoCal seed is the headliner.
Loiola and Caitlin Donatucci are a part of the afternoon wave that gets underway at approximately 12:30 p.m. They will be the lowest seeded team in Pool 7 where the No. 4 seed from NorCal is the top seeded team in the group.
The 16 teams left standing after Friday will battle it out until a state champion is crowned on Saturday with the final set to get started at 2:30 p.m.