FORT WORTH – To call the beginning of Makenna Wolfe and Kenzie Hultquist’s opening match of the TCU Invitational to Texas not exactly ideal would be perhaps the biggest understatement of this young 2025 beach volleyball season.

They sat in their chairs, confused if not a touch bemused, by the deficit they had dug in a blink of an eye: 1-9.  

1-9? How does that happen?

A multitude of ways. Errors. Poor decisions. An unlucky break here, an excellent play from Texas there. As soon as you thought the match couldn’t get worse, it found a way to do just that.

And then, slowly, in a grinding, mechanical sort of way, like a car engine sputtering to life, Wolfe and Hultquist began clawing back into the match. A 3-1 run made for a 10-4 side switch, which became 14-7 and 16-12. How many times had Wolfe, a senior with 50 wins to her name, been down 16-12 and found a way to come back? Enough for both her and Hultquist to know this set wasn’t over. Far from it. Another 4-3 run from Florida State cut the lead again, to 19-16. But down three set points at 20-17, a complete comeback still seemed, if not insurmountable, a tad unrealistic. The positive to take away from the matter was that the momentum had shifted, the trajectory of the match flipping its course to Wolfe and Hultquist, and maybe they could steal the second set and force a third.

But Wolfe sided out, and then did the darnedest thing, hitting a trickle ace that drew the ‘Noles within just one. That serve seemed to be the proverbial straw breaking the camel’s back, as that ace led to another earned point, and another after that, until, wouldn’t you know it – and it was hard to know, truly – Wolfe and Hultquist completed the most unlikely of comebacks, winning the first set, 22-20, after being down eight points.  

“Best comeback I’ve ever seen is Phil [Dalhausser] and Todd [Rogers] being down 6-0 in the third set of the opening round of the Beijing Olympics and winning,” assistant coach Nick Lucena said. “But that’s probably second.”

Wolfe and Hultquist would do it again, too, finding a way to come back in the third after being down 9-11 in a deciding set to 15. It would be a tone-setting win in what would become a 5-0 sweep over No. 13 Texas. The message for the weekend, and perhaps the season, had been sent: This Florida State team is never out of anything.

“I thought our team showed a lot of heart and fight,” head coach Brooke Niles said.

From top to bottom, the lineup was full of both.

Makenna Flaherty and Kyleene Filimaua showed it during a third set against Florida Atlantic on a drizzly and cold Saturday morning. Down two match points, they’d win rally after rally, fend off FAU again and again, until Filimaua alas ended it with a walk-off ace to win, 20-18. Given the wave-based format of the event, in which courts four, five, and six play first – six does not count for the match total – and one, two, and three play second, there was no telling just how critical that win was for Florida State. An hour later, it proved to be the deciding match, as Florida State won on court two, four and five while No. 12 FAU took the one and three.

“It didn’t matter the score, we kept playing hard, focusing on our side and found ways to win matches even when the odds were stacked against us,” Niles said. “Still need to improve on a lot of things but so proud of that.”

There was some level of grit, resilience, a response to adversity on virtually every court this weekend in Texas. On court one, Alexis Durish and Audrey Koenig responded after a sluggish start to Texas and two difficult losses to TCU and FAU to sweep an excellent Boise State pair in the final match – a pair who had stumped FAU’s top pair just a day before. The win would mark Koenig’s 50th of her career.

Carra Sassack and Bailey Higgins, the delightfully rare left-lefty combo on court three, rebounded from a gritty three-set loss to Florida Atlantic to finish the weekend leaving no doubt, closing on a 21-13, 21-10 win over Boise State. Myriah Massey delivered wherever, and with whomever, she ended up, be it court three with Flaherty (against Texas), four with Wolfe (against TCU) or five (against both FAU and Boise State). Gella Andrew and Madison Trusty were in arguably their finest form of the year on court two, proving to be a reliable source of problems for any opponent.

“That’s what you look for in your team, especially a team as young as ours: adaptability and toughness,” assistant Travis Mewhirter said. “They had it all weekend.”

They’ll need more of exactly that this upcoming week in California, when Florida State will meet No. 9 Cal, No. 15 Hawaii, No. 1 UCLA and No. 2 LMU on Friday and Saturday.