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  • Mission Viejo's Morgan Martin, left, battles Joy Dennis at the...

    Mission Viejo's Morgan Martin, left, battles Joy Dennis at the net during Sunday's gold-medal match at the inaugural FIVB U17 World Championships Sunday in Acapulco, Mexico.

  • Mission Viejo's Morgan Martin reaches to spike the ball during...

    Mission Viejo's Morgan Martin reaches to spike the ball during play at the inaugural FIVB U17 World Championships in Acapulco, Mexico.

  • Aliso Viejo's Kathryn Plummer dives for the ball during play...

    Aliso Viejo's Kathryn Plummer dives for the ball during play at the inaugural FIVB U17 World Championships in Acapulco, Mexico.

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The U.S. beach team of Morgan Martin (Mission Viejo) and Kathryn Plummer (Aliso Viejo) defeated compatriots Joy Dennis and Haley Hallgren, 20-22, 21-18, 15-13, on Sunday to win the gold medal at the inaugural FIVB Under-17 Beach Volleyball World Championships in Acapulco, Mexico.

Plummer , a junior-to-be at Aliso Niguel High, was selected as the women’s Most Outstanding Player of the tournament.

The third and deciding set was titanic as the two friendly rivals sparred back and forth. Martin and Plummer built an early lead at 6-3. Halgren and Dennis tied it at 7-7 before the more “veteran” of the two teams slowly inched away. Halgren and Dennis saved one match point to pull within one at 13-14, but Martin ended it all on the next rally for point, set and match with a kill.

“We train with them often and have played against them, but nothing compares to this feeling of winning the FIVB U-17 World Championship against them in Acapulco,” Martin said. “It was a hard match, which we expected. But even when we got behind, I tried to just concentrate on each individual point.”

Plummer added: “Believe it or not, I predicted that we would win the final set 15-13 to give us the gold medal and this very historic FIVB U-17 gold medal. We know Haley (Hallgren) and Joy (Dennis) so well we dreamed it would be our two teams in the final and it was. Then my prediction came to pass because we are playing at just the same level now. We hit a few shots we don’t normally even try and most of them worked. That was the difference.”

In Sunday’s semifinals, Martin and Plummer, seeded No. 29, came out strong but had to use grit and determination to hold off the comeback charge by Latvia’s Tina Graudina and Linda Gramberga, eventually taking the three-set victory, 21-15, 17-21, 15-12, in 51 minutes to earn a spot in the women’s final.

Martin and Plummer finished with an 8-0 record. They also won their pool with a 4-0 record before defeating teams from Mexico, Poland and then Latvia in the elimination rounds to book their ticket to the gold medal match.