May, McPeak Win in a Hurry

Misty May of Costa Mesa and Holly McPeak, of Manhattan Beach won their first match today with a 15-5 victory over Martina Hudcova and Tereza Tobiasova of the Czech Republic. The match took only 22 minutes.

“Everything felt fine,” McPeak said. “We were confident from the start.”

May, 23, and McPeak, 31, have been a team less than a year and still managed to qualify as the second U.S. team. May pulled a stomach muscle at a tournament in Berlin in July and has been bothered by the injury since. “I’m feeling much better now,” she said.

McPeak, with partner Nancy Reno, had been favored to win a medal at the inaugural Olympic beach volleyball competition in 1996 but finished a disappointing fifth.

Over the last four years, McPeak has played with four different partners but when May left the U.S. indoor team last August, McPeak called the Long Beach State graduate and the pair has improved every match since.