The Stanford beach volleyball team (2-2) split their four opening season matches at the Stanford Invitational on March 5-6, but built strong team chemistry that will prove important moving forward into this Tuesday’s match against San Francisco.

The Cardinal got off to a hot start on March 5, sweeping Sacramento State 5-0 and came from behind to clinch a 3-2 victory over San Jose State.

“That was our first tournament, and I think we were really excited to finally show off what we’ve been working towards in practice,” said junior Merete Lutz. “We were looking forward to facing other teams and testing ourselves against people other than the people we’ve been playing against for the past couple months.”

The Cardinal dropped both of their matches 4-1 to University of the Pacific and St. Mary’s on March 6.

Looking forward to Tuesday’s match, the Cardinal will have to avoid costly errors and be offensively smart as the San Francisco team is known for making tough defensive plays.

USF beat Pacific and St. Mary’s — the two teams that Stanford lost to at the Stanford Invitational — but that fact does not weigh heavily on head coach Denise Corlett’s mind going into the match. “They’re just another team,” she said.

The match against the Dons is the first of 10 over a 17-day period, and the team hopes that a win in the city will provide them with positive momentum moving into the stretch. The match will begin at 3 p.m. in San Francisco.

Contact Elliott Lapin at elapin ‘at’ stanford.edu.