After easy wins for both squads in Wednesday’s quarterfinal matchups, Team China will face Captain Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters in the six-on-six sand volleyball semifinals tonight.
The match, which will take place at the Hawkeye Recreation Fields at 6:45 p.m., may be a tight one with a spot in the finals up for grabs. The championship contest will be played immediately following the completion of the semifinal games.
Team China faced Dime Pieces in its quarterfinal set on Wednesday, pulling away in the second game after a close first.
Team China is composed of four freshmen, one sophomore, and one junior. But despite the inconsistency in class, it may be the team’s closely knit nature that has helped it go 5-0 so far in the tournament.
“We’ve been friends, so we know if we screw up, there’s not really a lot of pressure,” 18-year-old team captain Tony Dahlberg said. Four of the six players on the team are from the Orlean Park, Ill., and often play pickup volleyball in the summer.
Lone junior Peter Murphy leads the team on the dunes. Murphy, who plays club volleyball at Iowa, often relies on his instincts.
Most notably, in situations in which most players would tip the ball over the net after a bad set, he unleashes a powerful backward right hand fist on the sphere.
“It works,” Murphy said. He “can’t swing lefty, so if the set is too close to the net, I’ll just put it over.”
The three women also help the team. Meganne Franks, one of the four freshmen on Team China, played outside hitter in high school and is a good server to boot.
The most inexperienced player on the team is sophomore Kylee Karlic. But her captain thinks she is certainly doing her part.
“When she comes out for game day, she does very good,” Dahlberg said. “She’s the best at digging spikes.”
Yet even with all the weapons, Team China won’t have an easy time facing Captain Geech, a group that also pulled off an easy sweep in the quarterfinals.
The team is also a large 10-person squad, and all of its members are first-year physical-therapy graduate students.
Led by Shane Nissen, who his teammates call “The Volley Lama,” Geech uses its deep bench and athleticism to pound it out.
Nissen, a former basketball player for Wartburg College, leads the team in spikes, mostly because of his athleticism.
“I think my basketball background kind of helps me a bit,” he said. “I can find the ball pretty easily in the air.”
He also said the women on the team were not only helpful between the lines, but in helping coach the males on the finer points of the game.
Nissen said the women “have been giving me a lot of advice” and “kind of coach me on how to spike it correctly and use proper form.”
With the team on the steep learning curve, it wanted to keep up the momentum to face a rival squad in the sand tonight.
Rounding out the final four will be Team Bob Saget, which effortlessly beat Cruncheazy. The match between TOTS and Saget is also today at 6:45 p.m.
But no matter what team it may face, members of Captain Geech said as they play to their potential, they can win it all.
“I think we’ve got good potential as team,” Caitlin Larsen said. “We’re rock solid.”