The NCAA Women's Volleyball Championship refers to one of three

championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this sys ...

s in

women A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functional u ...

's indoor

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...

contested by the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

since 1981: * NCAA Division I Women's Volleyball Championship * NCAA Division II Women's Volleyball Championship * NCAA Division III Women's Volleyball Championship From 1970 through 1980, before the NCAA governed women's collegiate athletics, the

Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was a college athletics organization in the United States, founded in 1971 to govern women's college competitions in the country and to administer national championships (see AIAW Cham ...

alone conducted the women's collegiate volleyball championships. Volleyball was one of twelve women's sports added to the NCAA championship program for the 1981-82 school year, as the NCAA engaged in battle with the

AIAW The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was a college athletics organization in the United States, founded in 1971 to govern women's college competitions in the country and to administer national championships (see AIAW Cham ...

for sole governance of women's collegiate sports. The AIAW continued to conduct its established championship program in the same twelve (and other) sports; however, after a year of dual women's championships, the NCAA prevailed over the AIAW acquired its membership. In the NCAA Women's Volleyball Championship, separate tournaments are conducted for Division I, Division II, and Division III institutions. This differs from NCAA men's volleyball because there are far more NCAA member schools offering women's volleyball. Until the 2011–12 school year (2012 men's season—NCAA women's volleyball is a fall sport, while men's volleyball is a spring sport), there was no official divisional structure in men's collegiate volleyball, and all men's teams, regardless of their divisional affiliation, were eligible to compete for the same NCAA championship. Since 2011-12, the NCAA has truncated the championships, with the National Collegiate Championship (previously, the only men's tournament) open to schools in Divisions I and II, and the Division III Championship for Division III schools. In the sport of

beach volleyball Beach volleyball is a team sport played by two teams of two to four players each on a sand court divided by a net. Similar to indoor volleyball, the objective of the game is to send the ball over the net and to ground it on the opponent's side o ...

, the NCAA conducts a women-only, all-divisions

. The inaugural championship was held in spring 2016.

References

External links

*
NCAA Women's Volleyball

References

External links

See also