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Junior Devanne Sours tips the ball over the net while playing MCU Friday March 18, 2016 at Lucky 66 Bowl’s sand volleyball courts. The Lobos will compete in the Battle On The Bayou this weekend in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Junior Devanne Sours tips the ball over the net while playing MCU Friday March 18, 2016 at Lucky 66 Bowl’s sand volleyball courts. The Lobos will compete in the Battle On The Bayou this weekend in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Beach Volleyball: UNM heads to Louisiana in season finale

Beach volleyball will close out its 2016 campaign with a big weekend, playing five matches in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

LSU will serve as the host team in the Battle on the Bayou tournament and will hope to keep its national championship aspirations alive, while the Lobos hope to keep climbing up the unofficial rankings ladder, where DiG Magazine currently places them at No. 16.

Only the top eight teams have a shot at playing for a national title in the NCAA’s newest sport, a reflection of the growth that is still to come for beach volleyball.

Still, in just its second season playing in the sand, New Mexico (16-7) has competed with some of the nation’s elite and has proven to be a worthy opponent.

Hannah Johnson said she has experienced a great deal of benefit from competing in the spring, something she says that she will definitely cherish, with the end of her tenure at New Mexico coming soon.

“I am happy that I get to end it with my teammates and coaches and get to go to a state I’ve never been to,” Johnson said. “But also it’s kind of sad. It’s kind of an end to a little bit of a chapter in my life.”

Johnson said she will surely get over the roller coaster of emotions that she is going through and will try to make the most of the five-match weekend.

Though Johnson didn’t say for sure what is next for her, she said the program has been able to serve as a new experience and opened her eyes to qualities she could apply when coaching indoor volleyball. She said awareness and finesse have been an integral part of the beach game, which compliments play on the indoor court quite well.

Making the most of the weekend will mean garnering some wins. The team is still recouping from their matches against TCU two weekends ago where they were swept for the first time all season, losing all three.

One of the teams there will be TCU, the first team to plug in a loss on the weekend. The Lobos will also get a shot against LSU, a team that UNM lost to 4-1 in the opening match of last year’s inaugural season.

Johnson said the team is amped for some revenge against those two teams in particular, not having seen the remaining three competitors ever before in the early stages of the program’s history.

“It is a great opportunity to have another shot and prove that we are a better team,” assistant coach Pauline Manser said. “I’m sure the girls will be focused on those two matches, but what we have to keep in mind is that it’s five matches that we need to be focused on.”

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What Manser said the group needs to focus on is remaining consistent in all of the matches. She said the lack of consistency is what plagued the team two weeks ago in Fort Worth, Texas.

Though fatigue isn’t necessarily on Manser’s mind, she said, the coach did say that there has been a sickness floating around the team, which could play a factor in the most matches UNM has played in a single tournament.

“We are a little worried about how fresh they are going to be when they get there,” Manser said. “But five games in a weekend, there are other teams that are doing the same thing. We’re very good at managing ourselves between games and matches.”

The assistant coach said she has confidence the team is going to hold up quite well in the season’s final tournament.

The Lobos will take on unofficially ranked No. 18 Tulane on Saturday morning followed by No. 9 LSU right after, and capping the triple-header off with New Orleans. On Sunday, UNM will face off against Houston Baptist and the season rematch against TCU.

Liam Cary-Eaves is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Liam_CE.

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