Texas’ Ava Patton dives to save the ball during the team’s match against TCU at the Whitaker Sports Complex on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. The match was part of a two-day event marking the Longhorns’ first home appearance of the fall.

Newly-established athletic programs often take many years to find their footing, but after just three seasons, Texas beach volleyball is already on the verge of becoming national title contenders.

And the team’s rise is not looking to stop anytime soon.

“We’re trying to break records,” Texas head coach Stein Metzger told the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation on Feb. 3. “We want to see how fast it’s going to take us to knock on the door.”

After leading UCLA to two national championships in 11 seasons, Metzger left the Bruins for the Longhorns after the 2023 season. In that same season, Texas went 1–12 using players from the indoor volleyball team since it hadn’t been able to recruit any outside players yet. 

“I had an absolute blast being at UCLA and building that program,” Metzger said. “When I heard that I might have a chance to do it a second time, I just felt that was something that I couldn’t pass up.”

In 2024, Metzger brought in 12 beach volleyball-specific players, 11 of them through the transfer portal. He gave this group a special name. He dubbed this group “the Trailblazers” in a Feb. 6 interview.

This group was tasked with establishing the foundation and culture of Texas beach volleyball. The newcomers would have a massive impact on the future of the program — they were the spark. 

But it wasn’t easy at first.

Due to late scheduling, the Longhorns were only able to play a half season, leading to around half of their incoming players deciding to redshirt to preserve eligibility. This meant Texas’ roster was still diluted with players from indoor volleyball.

While the addition of experienced beach volleyball players certainly helped in 2024, the Longhorns still finished with a rather mediocre record of 7–8. From 2024 onward, things started to look up.

Texas now had the chance to build the rest of its roster and have a full offseason, helping players adapt to Metzger’s system and build chemistry with one another. That made a world of difference going into the next season.

In 2025, the Longhorns had their big breakthrough, winning the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association Championships, their first-ever conference title, and making it to the national quarterfinals. They finished the season with a standout 28–10 record, a colossal improvement from the two previous seasons.

Notable player improvements from 2024 to 2025 included redshirt senior Katie Hashman, whose record jumped from 8–7 to 25–13, and fifth-year Karin Zolnercikova, who went from playing just one match to a 27–7 record the following season. 

“Last year just felt like we were riding a rocket ship,” Metzger said. “The expectations were here, and we just kept climbing. … That definitely went well above our expectations for our first full year.”

Now, this season comes with a new set of challenges for Texas. 

This will be its first season in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation conference, one that Metzger believes is the “strongest conference that’s ever been put together in the history of the sport.”

But with the Longhorns’ high roster retention and the addition of a freshman class that Metzger says will “blow people’s minds,” they’re expecting similar, if not better, success going into this season. 

“I feel pretty good that we’re going to find ourselves in the top five of the entire country,” Metzger said. 

In just its fourth season, Texas is no longer in search of an identity — it’s in search of a championship.