As Sunday afternoon wore on, Holly Reisor’s major concern switched from winning the inaugural women's tournament in the Toyota Pro Beach East stop at Baltimore’s Rash Field to getting home.

Reisor had to catch a 6 p.m. flight back to her Austin, Texas residence.

Reisor and partner Ella Vakhidova did their bests to get Reisor to Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport on time, going through the double-elimination tournament undefeated.

They earned the $1,600 first-place check by beating Floridians Capri Hilgendorf and Kendra Jackson in three games, 18-21, 21-18, 15-13.

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It was a reunion for the pair, who had not competed together for more than three years after being frequent partners in AVP events and local tournaments in Texas.

The 6-foot Vakhidova, who lives in California, was staying in Atlanta when she started looking for tournaments.

“I Googled [volleyball tournaments], and this came up,” Vakhidova said. “[Reisor] was the only East Coast player I knew, or at least pretty close.”

Reisor flew in, and it didn’t take long for them to recapture the chemistry they once had. They used their height advantage to sweep through the tournament.

The lone hiccup was dropping the first game in the championship match. If they had lost that match, it would have forced a winner-take-all final since Hilgendorf and Jackson, who split $800 for second place, advanced to the final through the loser's bracket.

“We just had to clean our act up, play our game and quit making errors because the other team was playing well,” Reisor, who is 6-foot-3, said. “We had to step it up.”

They pulled out the second game and held off a late rally from Hilgendorf and Jackson to win the title, sending the pair scrambling to find a cab to the airport after the championship match ended around 4:30 p.m.

“It didn’t end quite quick enough,” Reisor said. “But we’ll take it.”

eric.detweiler@baltimoreexaminer.com