AVE MARIA, Fla.- The Ave Maria University beach volleyball made it to their first Sun Conference championship match on Saturday, but couldn't claim the first title in program history, falling to Webber International University, 3-1, in the final. AMU earned their way into the finals with a dramatic victory over Southeastern University, beating the Fire by a 3-2 score in the semifinals. AMU had lost in the semifinals in each of the first two Sun Conference Tournaments, with Saturday marking a new high-water mark for the program.

In Saturday's semifinals, the Gyrenes jumped out to a lead, winning two of the three matches that ended in the second set. Hannah Jones and Alayna Metherd moved their winning streak as a duo to six matches at the fourth flight, defeating SEU's Chloe Rhodes and Emily Eurice, 21-12, 21-19. At the second flight, Reina Thomas and Katie Grose became AMU's first duo to be eligible for AVCA Top Flight honors, moving to 12-3 overall with a 21-18, 21-12 victory over Sylvia Liszewski and Katie Chillura. Despite an SEU win at the fifth flight, the Gyrenes needed just one third set win to advance to the finals.

The two matches that advanced to a third set came at the first and third flights. Southeastern evened the match with a win at the first flight, as Alex Postlethwaite and Grace Petty snuck past Lily Grasso and Lily Witkoski, 20-22, 22-20, 15-8. The match came down to the decision at the third flight, where the duo of Zelie Kessler and Miah Pena came up huge for the Gyrenes. Pena and Kessler rallied from a 21-8 loss in the first set, taking the final two sets by scores of 21-18 and 15-11 to send Ave Maria to the SUN title match. 

However, the Gyrenes could not keep the momentum going into the championship match. The Gyrenes were only able to take one match off the conference regular season champions, as Webber International won their second straight conference title with a 3-1 victory.

Ave Maria finished the 2023 season with a 12-3 record, marking AMU's third season in a row with a winning percentage of .700 or above. The Gyrenes have posted an overall record of 32-11 in the past three seasons, with a 20-4 record in Sun Conference play. This season, two duos - Jones & Metherd and Grose and Thomas, won at least ten matches as a group, while Victoria Schein and Abbey Grose both won ten matches individually, with nine coming as a duo.