This post was updated Oct. 30 at 10:23 p.m.
Rock, paper, scissors is often not played in collegiate competitions.
But the game determined the outcome of a tournament championship Sunday.
UCLA beach volleyball opened its fall season in Huntington Beach, California, at the 2025 Surf City Collegiate Challenge, which spanned from Oct. 25 to Oct. 26. Two Bruin pairs captured first and second place in the Gold Playoffs, and another Bruin duo placed third in the Silver Playoffs.
The two UCLA pairs that clinched the Gold Playoff finale played rock, paper, scissors to decide the outcome of the first-place match.
“The tournament was for an AVCA bid for a pairs tournament, and so now that we had two pairs in the finals, that means UCLA would get the bid either way,” sophomore defender Alexa Fernandez said. “Our coaches just decided that it wasn’t worth playing it out just because it had been a long tournament, and we didn’t want to risk any more injuries. We called the rock, paper, scissors match and decided it that way.”
Senior defender Maggie Boyd and junior blocker Ava Williamson – who transferred from Arizona State prior to the Bruins’ 2025 campaign – won the rock, paper, scissors game and thus placed first in the top bracket.
Boyd and Williamson posted a 10-1 stanza record in their first contest playing together, suffering their lone frame defeat in their affair against South Florida’s pair.
And multiple freshmen debuts also complemented Williamson’s first outing in a blue and gold uniform.
Freshman quartet Jesse Dueck, Mallory LaBreche, Alina Ryan and Ruby Hill all competed in the Silver bracket, with Dueck and LeBreche earning a third-place finish. The freshmen pairs recorded a combined 6-4 record and defeated tandems hailing from programs such as Hawaiʻi, Washington and Pepperdine.
Williamson said she is hoping to grow alongside this first-year class while mentoring them throughout their initial collegiate campaigns.
“The fact that I can come alongside them, and I am almost kind of a freshman at UCLA, but I’m a junior in the sense that I’ve been doing beach volleyball for two years, so I know how the college athletics thing works,” Williamson said. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s specific to UCLA that’s really different than ASU that I don’t really have a grasp of yet, so I feel like it’s kind of helpful sometimes for me to put myself in the freshman shoes and walk alongside them and be like, ‘I also don’t know what I’m doing, but let’s figure it out together.’”
The rock, paper, scissors game in the Gold match marked a departure from the status quo, which could apply to coach Jenny Johnson Jordan’s squad heading into the 2025-2026 campaign, who is seemingly embracing a novel approach at the helm.
UCLA lost to LMU in the quarterfinal round of the NCAA tournament last season, which added a year to the program’s current six-year championship drought.
Yet, a heightened competitive mentality has defined the Bruins’ team culture heading into the new campaign.
“It really is just a great testament of how hard we’re pushing this (season),” Fernandez said. “Our coaches are doing such a great job of really pushing our limits and making practice hard so that we can go out there and perform. It’s almost easier to compete than it is to practice right now. That culture that we’re starting to build – that we started to build at the end of last year and going into this year – we’re really leaning into that competitive mindset.”
The question of piecing together a squad that lost seven players to graduation and added six new athletes from the transfer portal and the 2025 recruiting class often challenges a team’s preexisting foundation.
But novelty and difference are sometimes needed to cement an improved foundation that fuels championship aspirations, and the fall season provides ample time to achieve collective camaraderie with a new-look roster.
“The fall is very instrumental in building our foundation,” Jordan said. “Anytime you have a lot of new people on the team, a lot of it is about creating that culture so that when it comes time to battle and compete in the actual season, they’re bonded with each other, they trust each other and they want to go to battle with each other.”
Although rock, paper, scissors will likely not help the Bruins during the MPSF and NCAA tournaments, the competitive habits and culture they establish during the fall may help them prevail heading into MPSF and postseason play.
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