The Blazers’ Claudia Stockard found UAB via The Beach
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - March 9, 2026
Beach volleyball introduced Claudia Stockard to UAB.
Sound crazy? It does to Stockard, a 5-foot-10 sophomore on the UAB beach volleyball team.
“I first met (former UAB beach volleyball coach Terri Del Conte), our previous coach, at a prospect camp, and I did not even know what UAB was at all, which is crazy,” said Stockard, who is from Jacksonville, Fla. “But then coming on a visit here and hearing about the medical program and meeting all the girls, I was really impressed to begin with.”
Isabel Day, a 5-foot-7 junior, who is Stockard’s current playing partner, has a similar story. The Kansas City, Mo. native was a young beach volleyball player when she met Del Conte, who was then coaching at Missouri State. When Del Conte came to UAB several years later, she began to recruit Day.
“She reached out to me when I was in my recruiting and she told me she was at UAB,” Day said. “I'd never heard of it. But then when I like came on my visit, I was kind of surprised. Well, because my dad came here for work like 10 years ago and he was like, ‘Don't expect a lot.’ And then we came on a visit and he was like, ‘Wait, this is a lot better.’”
Both are not only happy with their decision but happily continuing to help put UAB on the NCAA beach volleyball map. The Blazers just finished a regular season where they set a school record with 24 wins, including victories over 18th ranked Washington and 20th ranked South Carolina. The win over South Carolina came a day after losing to the Gamecocks. Six of the Blazers’ nine losses came against teams ranked at the time. UAB has been receiving votes in the top 20 for most of the season and is 22nd overall in the latest rankings with 14 votes. They are on the doorstep of being in the top 20 for the first time in the program’s history.
Introductions aren’t necessarily needed anymore for beach volleyball players looking for a college home.
“I think already I've seen a lot of growth in the girls who are in high school and juniors right now,” Stockard said. “They're starting to know about UAB a lot earlier on and not just from seeing them at camps but from social media getting our name out there and us beating big schools. Our name is getting tossed around and people are starting to see who we are and know that we're a threat and we're beating the big schools that they might have been looking at first.”
UAB can take another important step next week in the Conference USA Beach Volleyball Championship in Youngsville, La. A spot in the 16-team bracket for the NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship is on the line. UAB earned the No. 2 seed in the double elimination tournament and will open play on Thursday at 10 a.m. against No. 7 seed UTEP. The Blazers beat the Miners, 5-0, earlier this season in a tournament in Clearwater, Fla. and UAB is 5-0 overall against C-USA teams. The Blazers did not play top seed FAU, which is the conference’s lone ranked team at No. 16, in the regular season or No. 3 seed FIU but UAB does have two wins a piece over No.4 seed South Florida and No. 5 seed Tulane.
UAB’s deepest run in the conference tournament came in 2023 when the Blazers made the semifinals. They are poised to take that next step this season.
“"We've been preparing mentally and physically for conference all year long," head coach Delaney Rose said in a university release. "We're tougher and more united than we've ever been, and this team is hungry to make history."
Stockard and Day will play an important role during the tournament. The duo is 13-1 since pairing up to play on Court 4 in the middle of the season. During that stretch, in the 14 matches, they have won 26 of 30 sets and they are currently riding an eight-match winning streak.
Impressive, for sure, but at this point they are just numbers.
“To be honest, I haven't really looked at it,” Day said. “I don't really like looking at it. We just focus on the game that's in front of us and conference (tournament) is a completely different thing. No one cares what our record was before. No one cares if we've won a ton before we go into conference. Like everyone at conference is playing their best and they're trying their hardest. It's definitely new and we know that every single game we have to take it.”
They actually teamed up a year ago but didn’t have quite the success as this season. They were 12-10 while playing on 20 matches on Court 2 and two on Court 3.
“It was my freshman year, I had a lot of nerves coming in and everything was just pretty new,” Stockard said. “So I think now as a sophomore, I've had a year under my belt. We just work better. We both have more confidence now, I think, and more trust in each other and more experience with knowing who's going to get what and where we need the ball. And knowing we can trust each other in tight situation.”
While they are on a roll as a late, the strength of this team is in its numbers. One match does not win a game for the team. It takes at least three individual wins to capture a team win. Depth is the key and the numbers suggest that is a plus for this team.
It starts on Court 1 where seniors Jasmine Haas and Olivia Stant are 26-7 this season and 52-14 dating back to last year. Haas is the program’s all-time leader in overall wins (93) and Court 1 wins (87). Stant is second in overall wins with 80. The 26 wins by the pair this season matches the single season record for wins that they set last season. As a team, they have the career win leaders on Court 1 (Haas), Court 2 (Day with 36) and Court 3 (senior Olivia Chychrun with 24). Chychrun is third in career wins with 71.
Chychrun and freshman Ava Grace Knott are 24-9 this season while playing on Courts 3, 4 and 5. The 24 wins by Knott broke the freshman record of 20 set by Stockard last season. Juniors Sadie Sharpe and Ashley Torsone teamed up later in the year and are currently 13-1 while playing on Court 5.
Each of three of the team’s seniors – Chychrun, Haas and Stant – made the C-USA All-Academic team. No other school had three members on the team.
All of those numbers have built the confidence as UAB heads into the next step.
“We have like a vision board and we always put our conference dog pile on our vision board,” Day said. “A dog pile is like when you win conference. That’s kind of like what we've been working on all season (and) all fall. We've been working on getting to that point where we can have that final dog pile at the end. And then also for our seniors, we talk a lot about like Team 14 and for our seniors, they were the ones who started to grow the program and it's their last year.”