REDWOOD CITY — St. Ignatius junior Liz Held is the inaugural Queen of the Beach in Northern California.
But what does that mean?
Thirty-two girls from 22 high schools took turns swapping partners on four beach volleyball courts at The Foundry in Redwood City on Sunday in a round-robin tournament hosted by the Northern California High School Beach Volleyball League.
“Queen of the Beach is interesting because you’re playing against somebody that you’re going to be partnering with in the next match — and so you rotate around,” said commissioner Barry Peters, whose daughter Kendall is a junior at Notre Dame-Belmont and is a verbal commit to play beach volleyball at Tulane.
After a couple of timed rounds trimmed down the competition, the top four came down to Held, St. Ignatius teammate Delaney Peranich, who is committed to Cal Poly, San Leandro junior Liz Waters-Leiga, who is committed to Florida State, and Homestead sophomore Sara Olsson.
“I like how you get to play with a lot of different people,” Held said. “Everyone out here is friends.”
“It’s really nice because you don’t really have any issues with any other girls and it’s just really relaxed and you play with the honor code,” Peranich said. “It’s a good character-building sport, in my opinion.”
A couple of days earlier, Held and Peranich found themselves inside the gym at Palo Alto High for the championship game of the Central Coast Section Open Division playoffs.
The atmosphere couldn’t have been any more of a contrast on Sunday.
“You’re outside playing in sand,” Peranich said. “It’s really fun and relaxing.”
“And you play more,” Held said. “Indoor, there’s a bench. There really isn’t a bench on the beach.”
No doubt familiarity played a role in the outcome, with Held and Peranich teaming up for a 15-2 victory as a pair.
“We played pretty well together, actually,” said Peranich, who in the spring and summer spends time with the Santa Cruz Beach Volleyball Club, same as Held.
Both of them also had to play against each other twice as partners with the rest of the girls in the final four, which is how the Queen of the Beach was determined.
“It was amazing,” Peters said. “A lot of interest from a lot of different schools all the way from the East Bay down to San Jose and up to Marin. We had schools that I had never heard of come today. It was a really good turnout.”
This is Year 2 for the NorCal league, which began with four teams last fall: Palo Alto, Woodside, Notre Dame-Belmont and Branson.
The goal is to expand to at least a solid core of six teams, with the hope of maybe as many as 10.
“Time will tell,” Peters said. “We’re probably going to post the schedule in December and we’ll see how many truly committed schools we have.”
There are also plans to introduce a new format in which schools can enter a single pairing into competition if unable to put together an entire team.
“The sport is growing huge in Northern California,” said Peters, who arranged for a college recruiting overview prior to the Queen of the Beach event. “And the optic of Northern California girls is getting really good.”
