Women’s beach volleyball clinches 3rd NCAA national championship with win over Stanford

Under the Bruin blue skies of Gulf Shores, Alabama, UCLA's women's beach volleyball team took home their third NCAA national championship on Sunday afternoon.

The team beat out No. 1 seed Stanford in their fifth meeting of the season to take the title - the first under coach Jenny Johnson Jordan. The Bruins' top pair of senior Maggie Boyd and sophomore Sally Perez pushed the team to its third and clinching win for the Bruins.

"I'm just so proud of this team," an emotional Boyd said on ESPN moments after their match. "We were all ready to go. We knew every single one of our pairs could win, and that's something that's so special and unique. And we put in so much work this season. Last year we lost in the semis, and we said we were going to take it home next year, and every day we showed up, and we did that, and [I'm] just so proud of us."

The Bruins came into the tournament as the No. 3 seed, but defeated No. 2 Texas on Saturday to advance to the final. Sunday's win on the sand marks the 127th national championship in UCLA Athletics history.

"I am just so incredibly proud of this team," Johnson Jordan told ESPN after the winning match. "We've had a lot of adversity these last couple of weeks, and they continue to show up for each other, sacrifice self [for] the team, and I could not be more proud of the team and of the staff."

With beach volleyball played in pairs across five courts in best-of-three sets, Sunday's win took shape after Kaley Mathews and Ensley Alden beat Stanford's Brooke Rockwell and Ruby Sorra in straight sets. Ava Williamson and Jesse Dueck then won on court 4, setting up the Bruins to need just one more win - and it ended up being on the No. 1 court with Boyd and Perez - to take the championship.

UCLA and Stanford had gone back and forth on wins and losses to each other all season, but Sunday's sweep gave UCLA the edge: 3-2 in faceoffs with the Cardinals for the 2025-2026 season.

After the championship win, Johnson Jordan said the team was looking forward to getting back to Westwood to celebrate on home soil.

"It is sweet to win national championship No. 127 for the school, for this team, for this program," she said, according to UCLA Athletics. "We are excited to celebrate a little bit more here, but we are more excited to go home and celebrate with everybody. It's a really special one, especially for Maggie Boyd, who has been here four years and who has been so close so many times. I remember last year after we lost saying next year we are going to have your back, and I'm so glad that we were able to do that today."