NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship

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.

NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship
SportCollege beach volleyball
Founded2016
No. of teams8
Country United States
Most recent
champion(s)		UCLA
TV partner(s)ESPN, TruTV, TBS
Official websitehttps://www.ncaa.com/sports/beach-volleyball

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
USC at the inaugural tournament

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.

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
Details		 Cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic

Summary

Cumulative results
Team Championships Runners-up Third-place Fourth-place
UCLA 2 (2018, 2019) 0 1 (2016) 0
USC 2 (2016, 2017) 1 (2019) 0 1 (2018)
Florida State 0 2 (2016, 2018) 0 1 (2017)
Hawaii 0 0 2 (2017, 2018) 2 (2016), 2019)
Pepperdine 0 1 (2017) 0 0
LSU 0 0 1 (2019) 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
School
USC 4CHCH4RU
UCLA 435CHCH
Florida State 4RU4RU5
Pepperdine 45RU57
Hawaii 44334
LSU 3553
South Carolina 277
Stetson 275
Arizona 15
Georgia State 17
Long Beach State 17
Florida International 17
Cal Poly 17

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

References
  1. "NCAA DII, DIII membership approves Sand Volleyball as 90th championship". NCAA News. NCAA.com. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
  2. "NCAA's newest championship will be called beach volleyball". NCAA. June 30, 2015. Retrieved July 2, 2015.
  3. "Culver column: FSU beach volleyball could be a part of NCAA history". Tallahassee Democrat. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  4. "Turner Sports Reaches Multi-Year Agreement to Present NCAA National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship". NCAA. 26 April 2016. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  5. "NCAA awards ESPN beach volleyball rights". ncaa.com. December 20, 2017. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
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