Sophomore standout beach volleyball player Barett Nolan has committed to NCAA Division II Colorado Mesa.
Nolan helped Irvine Valley win a California Community College Athletic Association State Championship as a team in 2022 and had another successful season with the Lasers in 2023.
IVC captured two straight Orange Empire Conference Eastern Division titles with her playing as one of the Lasers' top pairs. She was a two-time all-conference honoree.
Nolan, out of Trabuco Hills High, was a big part of the 2022 state championship team at IVC.
She teamed and with Jolie Rasmussen last year on the second court. And the duo won the deciding set and match at the Laser Beach Courts last May.
Rasmussen and Nolan, who only started playing together in March, won the first set, 21-15, but Feather River's Katherine Gee and Sydney Rowe dominated the second set, 21-9.
Irvine Valley took a 9-6 lead in the third set only to see the Golden Eagle pair score five points in a row, including getting a block by Rowe to put Feather River ahead, 11-9.
But the Lasers tied the match at 12 on a hitting error and then went up, 13-12, on a kill by Rasmussen.
The set was tied at 13 and 14 before IVC got a kill by Nolan and a ball hit out by Feather River ended the final and gave Irvine Valley its second CCCAA team title.
"They fit," former Irvine Valley coach Tom Pestolesi said of Rasmussen and Nolan. "It is difficult to make changes sometimes, but we knew that it was a pairing that could work. They came up big today."
This spring, Nolan played at No. 1 for the Lasers with teammates Sydney Dews and then Chloe Swanson.
Nolan and Swanson made the second day and the round of 16 as a pair at the CCCAA State Championship at West Valley College in Saratoga earlier this month.
Nolan is headed to a Colorado Mesa team that is one of the best four-year programs in the country.
The Mavericks capped a record-setting season as the national runners-up at the AVCA Small College Beach Championships in Tampa, Fla.
Colorado Mesa finished the season with a 19-8 record overall.
