The NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship is an

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges ...

-sanctioned tournament to determine the national champions of collegiate women's

beach volleyball Beach volleyball is a team sport played by two teams of two or more players 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 of th ...

. It is a

National Collegiate The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges a ...

Championship featuring teams from Division I, Division II and Division III, and is the 90th, and newest, NCAA championship event. It was the first new NCAA championship to be created since the

NCAA Division III Men's Volleyball Championship The NCAA Division III men's volleyball tournament is a championship event officially sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the main governing body for U.S. college sports. Open only to schools in Division III of the ...

in 2012, and the first for women since the

NCAA Bowling Championship The NCAA Bowling Championship is a sanctioned women's championship in college athletics. Unlike many NCAA sports, only one National Collegiate championship is held each season with teams from Division I, Division II, and Division III competing ...

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 NCAA Emerging Sports for Women are intercollegiate women's sports that are recognized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, but do not have sanctioned NCAA Championships. History In 1994, the NCAA adopted th ...

program (which included

women's ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

bowling Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), though ...

rowing Rowing is the act of propelling a human-powered watercraft using the sweeping motions of oars to displace water and generate reactional propulsion. Rowing is functionally similar to paddling, but rowing requires oars to be mechanically ...

, and

water polo Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with th ...

in the past). As such, a separate championship had been contested annually, since 2012, by the

American Volleyball Coaches Association The American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) is an organization of over 6,000 members, incorporated as a private non-profit educational corporation in 1981, as the Collegiate Volleyball Coaches Association. It is currently headquartered in ...

. Before 2012 several championships were televised by

Collegiate Nationals The Collegiate Nationals was a multisport event for college students across the United States. The events aired annually on CBS College Sports Network from 2006 through 2012. In 2009 the name was changed to "The Alt Games." The Nationals included ...

. 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.

Structure

2016–2021

The championship is held each May. From 2016 through 2021, eight teams participated, 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 The ASUN Conference, formerly the Atlantic Sun Conference, is a collegiate athletic conference operating mostly in the Southeastern United States. The league participates at the NCAA Division I level, and began sponsoring football at the Divi ...

(7 members) *

Big West Conference The Big West Conference (BWC) is an American collegiate athletic conference whose member institutions participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I. The conference was originally formed on July 1, 1969, as the Pacifi ...

(7 members) *

Coastal Collegiate Sports Association The Coastal Collegiate Sports Association is an NCAA Division I college athletic conference. Established in 2008, the Coastal Collegiate Swimming Association (CCSA) was originally developed by four regional Division I conferences — the AS ...

(12 members) *

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. It participates in Division I of the NCAA; the conference's football programs compete in the Football Cham ...

(6 members) *

Pac-12 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Divisi ...

(9 members) *

Southland Conference The Southland Conference, abbreviated as SLC, is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the South Central United States (specifically Texas and Louisiana). It participates in the NCAA's Division I for all sports; for football, it ...

(9 members) *

West Coast Conference The West Coast Conference (WCC) — known as the California Basketball Association from 1952 to 1956 and then as the West Coast Athletic Conference until 1989 — is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I consisting of ...

(7 members)

2022–present

From 2022 onwards, the championship tournament was expanded to 16 teams. As of spring 2022, eight conferences sponsor beach volleyball, and the winners of each conference will receive automatic bids for the championship. *

Conference USA Conference USA (C-USA or CUSA) is an intercollegiate athletic conference whose current member institutions are located within the Southern United States. The conference participates in the NCAA's Division I in all sports. C-USA's offices are ...

Additionally, two teams from the East Region and two teams from the West Region will be given bids by the NCAA beach volleyball committee, while the final four teams will be selected at large.

Results

Summary

Cumulative results

Result by school and by year

Twenty-one 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: * National Champion * National Runner-up * 3rd place * 4th place * Tied for 5th place * Tied for 7th place * Participant (tournament in progress)

Broadcasting

Turner Sports held broadcast rights to the tournament for the first two years (2016 and 2017), with early-round coverage airing on

TruTV TruTV (stylized as truTV) is an American basic cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The channel primarily broadcasts comedy, docusoaps and reality shows. The channel was originally launched in 1991 as Court TV, a network that ...

, and the championship game broadcast on TBS. In December 2017,

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

signed a multiyear agreement to broadcast the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Championship through 2022.

References

External links

NCAA Awards 2016 and 2017 National Championship Sites

NCAA Emerging Sports: Sand Volleyball

College Beach Volleyball
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ncaa Women's Volleyball Championship College women's beach volleyball in the United States

Beach volleyball Beach volleyball is a team sport played by two teams of two or more players 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 of th ...

Beach volleyball competitions USA NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball