Founded 2016 Country United States Number of teams 8 | No. of teams 8 Most recent
champion(s) USC (1) TV partners truTV, TBS | |
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Sport College beach volleyball Official website | ||
Ncaa beach volleyball championship stetson highlights
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. 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.
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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 one of the NCAA's "emerging sports" (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.
Structure
The championship is held each May and consists of eight teams playing in a double-elimination style tournament 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 2015, five conferences sponsored 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. All five conferences were represented in the inaugural tournament:
Broadcasting
Turner Sports holds broadcast rights to the tournament, early-round coverage airs on TruTV, and the championship game airs on TBS.