NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship
Current season, competition or edition: 2021 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship | |
 | |
| Sport | College beach volleyball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2016 |
| No. of teams | 8 |
| Country |  United States |
| Most recent champion(s) | USC (3) |
| Most titles | USC (3) |
| TV partner(s) | ESPN, TruTV, TBS |
| Official website | https://www.ncaa.com/sports/beach-volleyball |
The NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship is an NCAA-sanctioned tournament to determine the national champions of collegiate women's beach volleyball. It is a National Collegiate Championship featuring teams from Division I, Division II and Division III, and is the 90th, and newest, NCAA championship event.[1] It was the first new NCAA championship to be created since the NCAA Division III Men's Volleyball Championship in 2012, and the first for women since the NCAA Bowling Championship in 2004.
History[]
The championship was approved by the NCAA Convention during the fall of 2015, and a committee was selected to determine the tournament's organizational structure. Before 2015, sand volleyball had been part of the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program (which included women's ice hockey, bowling, rowing, and water polo in the past). As such, a separate championship had been contested annually, since 2012, by the American Volleyball Coaches Association. Before 2012 several championships were televised by Collegiate Nationals. As of 2015, over 50 schools (from Divisions I, II, and III) had sponsored sand volleyball, ten more than the total number of required programs.
The sport's name was changed from "sand volleyball" to the more usual "beach volleyball" in June 2015, and the committee overseeing the sport is now named the NCAA Beach Volleyball Committee.[2]
Structure[]
The championship is held each May and consists of eight teams playing in a double-elimination style tournament with a single-elimination final, under standard beach volleyball rules. All matches consist of five sets, with each team needing to win three sets to advance.
The NCAA does not add automatic qualifiers until two championship seasons have passed; but in 2016, the top 3 teams from the east and west were given automatic bids with 2 additional teams invited at-large.
As of fall 2019, seven conferences sponsor beach volleyball, all with at least six members — the minimum number for a conference to qualify for an automatic bid to other NCAA championship tournaments. Five of these conferences were represented in the inaugural tournament; the exceptions are the Ohio Valley Conference and Southland Conference, both of which begin beach volleyball sponsorship in the upcoming 2020 season.
- ASUN Conference (7 members)
- Big West Conference (7 members)
- Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (12 members)
- Ohio Valley Conference (6 members)
- Pac-12 Conference (9 members)
- Southland Conference (9 members)
- West Coast Conference (7 members)
Results[]
| NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Site (Host) |
Host Venue | Final | Semifinalists | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Winner | Score | Runner-up | Third Place | Fourth Place | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 2016 Details |
Gulf Shores, AL (UAB) |
Gulf Shores Public Beach | USC | 3–0 | Florida State | UCLA | Hawaii | |||||||||||||||||
| 2017 Details |
USC | 3–2 | Pepperdine | Hawaii | Florida State | |||||||||||||||||||
| 2018 Details |
UCLA | 3-1 | Florida State | Hawaii | USC | |||||||||||||||||||
| 2019 Details |
UCLA | 3-0 | USC | LSU | Hawaii | |||||||||||||||||||
| 2020 | Cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2021 Details |
Gulf Shores, AL (UAB) |
Gulf Shores Public Beach | USC | 3–1 | UCLA | LMU | LSU | |||||||||||||||||
Summary[]
Cumulative results[]
| Team | Championships | Runners-up | Third-place | Fourth-place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USC | 3 (2016, 2017, 2021) | 1 (2019) | 0 | 1 (2018) |
| UCLA | 2 (2018, 2019) | 1 (2021) | 1 (2016) | 0 |
| Florida State | 0 | 2 (2016, 2018) | 0 | 1 (2017) |
| Hawaii | 0 | 0 | 2 (2017, 2018) | 2 (2016), 2019) |
| LSU | 0 | 0 | 1 (2019) | 1 (2021) |
| Pepperdine | 0 | 1 (2017) | 0 | 0 |
| LMU | 0 | 0 | 1 (2021) | 0 |
Result by school and by year[]
Thirteen teams have appeared in the NCAA Tournament in at least one year starting with 2016. The results for all years are shown in this table below.
The code in each cell represents the furthest the team made it in the respective tournament:
- 7 Tied for 7th place
- 5 Tied for 5th place
- 4 4th place
- 3 3rd place
- RU National Runner-up
- CH National Champion
| APP | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 21 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School | ||||||
| USC | 5 | CH | CH | 4 | RU | CH |
| UCLA | 5 | 3 | 5 | CH | CH | RU |
| Florida State | 5 | RU | 4 | RU | 5 | 5 |
| Pepperdine | 4 | 5 | RU | 5 | 7 | |
| Hawaii | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | |
| LSU | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | |
| Stetson | 2 | 7 | 5 | |||
| Cal Poly | 2 | 7 | 5 | |||
| South Carolina | 2 | 7 | 7 | |||
| Loyola Marymount | 1 | 3 | ||||
| Arizona | 1 | 5 | ||||
| Georgia State | 1 | 7 | ||||
| Long Beach State | 1 | 7 | ||||
| Florida International | 1 | 7 | ||||
| Stanford | 1 | 7 | ||||
| TCU | 1 | 7 |
Broadcasting[]
Turner Sports held broadcast rights to the tournament for the first two years (2016 and 2017), with early-round coverage airing on TruTV, and the championship game broadcast on TBS.[3][4] In December 2017, ESPN signed a multiyear agreement to broadcast the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Championship through 2022.[5]
See also[]
- American Volleyball Coaches Association – previous sponsor of collegiate beach volleyball tournaments in the United States
- NCAA Men's Indoor Volleyball Championships (National Collegiate, Division III)
- NCAA Women's Indoor Volleyball Championships (Division I, Division II, Division III)
- List of NCAA women's beach volleyball programs
References[]
- ^ "NCAA DII, DIII membership approves Sand Volleyball as 90th championship". NCAA News. NCAA.com. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
- ^ "NCAA's newest championship will be called beach volleyball". NCAA. June 30, 2015. Retrieved July 2, 2015.
- ^ "Culver column: FSU beach volleyball could be a part of NCAA history". Tallahassee Democrat. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
- ^ "Turner Sports Reaches Multi-Year Agreement to Present NCAA National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship". NCAA. 26 April 2016. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- ^ "NCAA awards ESPN beach volleyball rights". ncaa.com. December 20, 2017. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
External links[]
- NCAA Awards 2016 and 2017 National Championship Sites
- NCAA Emerging Sports: Sand Volleyball[dead link]
- College Beach Volleyball
National Collegiate Athletic Association | ||
|---|---|---|
| NCAA |
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| Division I |
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| Division II |
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| Division III |
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| Single-division sports and championships |
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Events listed in italics have been discontinued. | ||
- College women's beach volleyball in the United States
- NCAA Division I championships
- Beach volleyball competitions
- National volleyball leagues
- Women's beach volleyball competitions in the United States