As the new spring semester is now underway at Pepperdine, fall sports have been in the off-season for two months. Women’s Soccer, Men’s Water Polo and Women’s Volleyball all saw eventful seasons, highlighted by their dominant conference records.
Women’s Soccer’s regular season ended with a WCC Championship, but the team is hungry for more. While Men’s Water Polo and Women’s Volleyball didn’t achieve a title like Women’s Soccer, team growth and learning are still active. Adam Csapo, Men’s Water Polo junior attacker, spoke about how momentum and improvement roll from season to season.
“We’re still in the process of trying to figure out what things we have to change, but we’re starting it right now and hopefully this trend of improving year by year keeps going,” Csapo said.
Women’s Soccer
Women’s Soccer kicked off the first five games of their season with two wins, two draws and a loss. The next game was their biggest yet; their first ranked matchup of the season against No. 3 University of California, Los Angeles at Tari Frahm Rokus Field. In a close battle, Pepperdine prevailed 1-0 after sophomore defender Peyton Leonard headed the ball into the back of the net during the second half.
Junior midfielder/forward Tatum Wynalda believes the win against UCLA showed the squad what they are capable of.
“It kind of served as a way that we proved to ourselves that, you know what, we’re just as capable and able to do this as anybody else,” Wynalda said. “It just kind of invoked this fire within us. Coming off of that win, we gained a lot of confidence, kind of gained our rhythm and were able to go into WCC riding a high.”
The team’s win was the second match in a 10-game undefeated streak that dominated the bulk of the Waves’ schedule. By the end of that undefeated streak, Pepperdine entered their matchup against Loyola Marymount University as the No. 13 ranked school among NCAA Women’s Soccer teams.
The game against LMU was a bump in the road, a 3-0 loss against a conference rival, but Leonard talked about how it was useful for the Waves to remember how hard they need to fight.
“That game was like a wake up call — we need to step it up if we really want to win,” Leonard said. “We knew we could win conference. We kept playing to the ability we knew we could, but we all had to be in it together.”
The Waves closed out their next five games with three wins and two losses. Their final regular season win came against the University of San Francisco, where the Waves clinched their first WCC title since 2017 and the fifth in team history, along with a berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Women’s Soccer finished the regular season with a 12-3-5 record and a 6-1-3 conference record.
Pepperdine’s season ended during a home matchup against the University of California, Berkeley. The Waves lost 1-2 against the Golden Bears in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
As the Waves prepare for the upcoming season, one thing is on their mind: more.
“We’re always looking for more — we’re always digging for more,” Wynalda said. “I think it’s only made the hunger even stronger. We want to go back to back with WCC. We think we can, and I know we will.”
Wynalda said the team is looking for a deeper NCAA run.
“The first round has been always so tricky for us, so I think it would be a really massive thing for us to just surpass that first round and take it as far as we can,” Wynalda said. “Coming off of the season we just had, we’re so grateful. No one can take that away from us, but we’re looking to always improve and keep moving forward.”
Men’s Water Polo
Men’s Water Polo started off hot.
In the team’s first five games, the squad won all five, including two against ranked opponents. By the time the Waves geared up for their sixth game of the season, they were one half of a juggernaut matchup: No. 3 University of Southern California vs. No. 4 Pepperdine.
The Waves lost against the Trojans but kept rolling through opponents. By the time they reached the halfway point of the season, the Waves were 11-2 through 13 games, with their only losses when they faced USC and Stanford University, both of which were ranked third when the Waves matched up with them.
At that point in the season, when the Graphic recapped the first half of Water Polo’s schedule, Csapo said, “If we’re not there at the NCAA tournament at the end of the year, I view it as a failure, and I feel like everyone else on the team does as well.”
The second half of the Waves’ season saw less wins than the first. Pepperdine went 9-5 through 14 regular season matchups, with four of the five losses against top ten teams, while the other came against No. 11 Princeton University.
Pepperdine prepared for the WCC Tournament while remembering their upset loss against California Baptist University just one year prior.
The Waves took the win in the first round against LMU, 19-15. Pepperdine met San Jose State University in the next round, a team they had beaten 13-10 just two weeks prior.
The Waves fell to the Spartans 10-14, failing to win a WCC Title or secure a berth in the NCAA Tournament. Men’s Water Polo’s 2024 season had ended with a 21-8 record, including a 5-1 record in the conference.
As Water Polo prepares for a new season, Csapo returned to his quote from the halfway point of the season.
“I still agree with that quote,” Csapo said. “Looking back, obviously, you have to learn from stuff. So now I can see, obviously, the positive side of last season, and I can see things that we can learn from. You can’t just view something like you’re a failure or a success. We did fail — but we did learn too.”
Women’s Volleyball
Opposite to Men’s Water Polo, Women’s Volleyball took some time to get going. In the Waves’ first 10 games of the season, the squad went 3-7.
As the team prepared for their 11th game, they also prepared for a new part of their schedule: conference. They first matched up with Oregon State University, and from that point on, the Waves found their groove. Their win against Oregon marked the beginning of a 9-1 run in the conference.
Pepperdine handled conference play in dominant fashion, finishing the regular season with a 17-11 record, including a 14-4 conference record. However, the Waves didn’t crack the playoffs.
Women’s Volleyball might not have reached the same heights they had just a season before, including a WCC Championship, but junior setter Brynne McGhie doesn’t view the season as a failure.
“I like to look back positively on this season and think that we had a great season,” McGhie said. “Even though it didn’t end up the way we wanted, it’s not something to look back and be upset about or feel ashamed of.”
As Women’s Volleyball gears up for another season, they prepare for the potential departure of multiple seniors, including outside hitter/opposite Grace Chillingworth, graduate outside hitter/opposite Birdie Hendrickson and libero/defensive specialist Trinity Stanger.
Chillingworth achieved WCC Freshmen of the Year in 2021 and WCC Player of the Year in 2023, according to Pepperdine Athletics.
With the departure of these seniors, Pepperdine still has young players on the roster who were a significant part of the team last season, including freshman middle blocker Ella Piskorz and junior setter Rosemary Archer, who both started every match for the Waves this season. Piskorz achieved All-WCC first team and All-WCC freshmen team honors, according to Pepperdine Athletics.
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Contact Nick Charkhedian via email: nareg.charkhedian@pepperdine.edu
