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NCAA beach volleyball championship

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For the Philippines NCAA championship, see NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship (Philippines).
NCAA beach volleyball championship
Current season, competition or edition:
Current sports event 2026 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship
SportCollege beach volleyball
Founded2016
No. of teams16
Country United States
Most recent
champion		UCLA (3)
Most titlesUSC (6)
BroadcastersESPN (current) and truTV, TBS (former)
Official websitehttps://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 became the 90th, and newest at the time, NCAA championship event.[1][2]

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.

USC have been the most successful program, with six national titles.

History

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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.[3]

Structure

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2016–2021

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USC at the inaugural tournament

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 duals consist of five matches, with each team needing to win three matches 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.

2022, 2025-present

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From 2022 onwards, the championship tournament was expanded to 16 teams. In 2025 the number of conferences eligible for an Automatic Bid returned to 8 and the Tournament returned to 16 teams.

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.[4]

2023–2024

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Starting in 2023, the tournament switched to a standard single elimination bracket from the partial double elimination bracket system used before.[5] The field was also expanded to 17 teams to allow for nine automatic qualifiers.[6]

Results

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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 (2) 3–2 Pepperdine Hawaii Florida State
2018
Details 		UCLA 3-1 Florida State Hawaii USC
2019
Details 		UCLA (2) 3-0 USC LSU Hawaii
2020 Canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic
2021
Details 		Gulf Shores, AL
(UAB) 		Gulf Shores Public Beach USC (3) 3–1 UCLA Loyola Marymount LSU
2022
Details 		USC (4) 3–1 Florida State UCLA Loyola Marymount
2023
Details 		USC (5) 3–2 UCLA Florida State/TCU
2024
Details 		USC (6) 3–0 UCLA Cal Poly/LSU
2025
Details 		TCU 3–2 Loyola Marymount Cal Poly/UCLA
2026
Details 		UCLA (3) 3–0 Stanford Florida State/Texas
2027
Details
2028
Details
2029
Details
2030
Details
2031
Details

Summary

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Team Titles

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Team # Years
USC 6 2016, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
UCLA 3 2018, 2019, 2026
TCU 1 2025

Result by school and by year

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Twenty-eight teams have appeared in the NCAA Tournament in at least one year starting with 2016. The results for all years are shown below. The code in each cell represents the furthest the team made it in the respective tournament. Each team's seed in the tournament is shown in superscript to the right of the team's result.

  •  CH  National Champion
  •  RU  National Runner-up
School Conference # T8 T4 T2 CH 16 17 18 19 21 22 23 24 25 26

USC    
 MPSF 10 10 8 7 6 ²CH ¹CH ⁵4 ¹RU ²CH ¹CH ³CH ¹CH ⁵QF ⁴QF
UCLA    
 MPSF 10 10 9 6 3 ⁴3 ²5 ¹CH ²CH ¹RU ³3 ¹RU ²RU ¹SF ³CH
TCU    
 Big 12 6 4 2 1 1 ⁸7 ²7 ²SF ⁶✖ ²CH ¹⁰✖
Big 12 10 10 6 3 - ¹RU ⁴4 ⁴RU ³5 ³5 ⁵RU ⁴SF ⁴QF ⁸QF ⁵SF
West Coast 6 6 3 1 - ⁵3 ⁴4 ⁶QF ⁸QF ⁴RU ⁷QF
Stanford    
 MPSF 6 5 1 1 - ⁶7 ⁹✖ ¹⁰QF ³QF ³QF ¹RU
Pepperdine    
 West Coast 4 4 1 1 - ³5 ³RU ²5 ⁴7
Hawaii    
 Big West 7 4 4 - - ⁵4 ⁵3 ³3 ⁷4 ¹³✖ ¹¹✖ ⁹✖
LSU    
 MPSF 8 7 3 - - ⁷5 ⁷5 ⁵3 ⁴4 ⁶5 ⁵QF ¹¹SF ¹¹✖
Cal Poly    
 Big West 6 5 2 - - ⁶7 ⁷5 ¹²✖ ⁵SF ⁶SF ⁶QF
Texas    
 MPSF 2 2 1 - - ⁷QF ²SF
California    
 MPSF 5 3 - - - ¹¹✖ ⁸QF ⁷QF ¹⁰✖ ⁸QF
Sun Belt 6 2 - - - ⁷7 ¹⁰5 ¹⁴✖ ¹⁴✖ ¹⁵✖ ¹⁵✖
Stetson    
 ASUN 5 2 - - - ⁸7 ⁸5 ¹⁴✖ ¹⁵✖ ¹²✖
Big 12 2 2 - - - ⁸7 ⁶7
Big West 5 1 - - - ⁶7 ⁹✖ ¹⁰✖ ⁹✖ ⁹✖
CUSA 3 1 - - - ⁸7 ¹²✖ ¹³✖
FIU    
 CUSA 2 1 - - - ⁸7 ¹³✖
Arizona    
 Big 12 1 1 - - - ⁶5
Southland 4 - - - - ¹⁵✖ ¹⁷✖ ¹⁵✖ ¹³✖
MPSF 3 - - - - ⁷✖ ⁷✖ ¹¹✖
Ohio Valley 3 - - - - ¹⁷P ¹⁶✖ ¹⁶✖
UT Martin    
 Ohio Valley 2 - - - - ¹⁶✖ ¹⁶P
ASUN 2 - - - - ¹⁶✖ ¹²✖
Big 12 1 - - - - ¹²✖
Washington    
 MPSF 1 - - - - ¹³✖
Big 12 1 - - - - ¹⁴✖
Tulane    
 CUSA 1 - - - - ¹⁴✖

Broadcasting

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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.[7][8] In December 2017, ESPN signed a multiyear agreement to broadcast the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Championship through 2022.[9]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "NCAA DII, DIII membership approves Sand Volleyball as 90th championship". NCAA News. NCAA.com. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
  2. ^ "NATIONAL COLLEGIATE BEACH VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIP RECORDS BOOK" (PDF). ncaa.org. NCAA. Retrieved 20 January 2025.
  3. ^ "NCAA's newest championship will be called beach volleyball". NCAA. June 30, 2015. Retrieved July 2, 2015.
  4. ^ Feinswog, Lee (April 19, 2022). "Postseason possibilities as NCAA beach volleyball teams eye bids to Gulf Shores". volleyballmag.com. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
  5. ^ "Beach volleyball championship format to change in 2023".
  6. ^ Fasbender, Kristin W.; Cribbs, Julie (February 6, 2023). "Memorandum" (PDF). National Collegiate Athletic Association. p. 1. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 26, 2023. Retrieved May 1, 2023.
  7. ^ "Culver column: FSU beach volleyball could be a part of NCAA history". Tallahassee Democrat. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  8. ^ "Turner Sports Reaches Multi-Year Agreement to Present NCAA National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship". NCAA. 26 April 2016. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  9. ^ "NCAA awards ESPN beach volleyball rights". ncaa.com. December 20, 2017. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
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