NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship May 3-5 at Gulf Shores Public Beach

NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship May 3-5 at Gulf Shores Public Beach
G.S. continues to make event part of its brand by securing event through 2031
By Fran Thompson
No. 4 seed Loyola Marymount is set to take on No. 13 seed Florida Atlantic in the first round of the 2025 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship on Friday, May 2 at 9 a.m. at Gulf Shores Public Beach to kick-off the three day tourney that will be held in Gulf Shores at least through 2031. Tickets are available at eventbrite. com or at the gate.
The tourney was originally scheduled to move to Huntington Beach this year and next, but it was announced in January that Huntington Beach was stepping down to open up housing opportunities for people working to restore neighborhoods destroyed by wildfires that leveled two beach towns more than an hour south of there. The NCAA Women’s Beach Volleyball Committee did not include an explanation in the recent social media post announcing that the 2026 tourney will also be in Gulf Shores.
“With this agreement, Gulf Shores will be the center of collegiate beach volleyball action through 2031, as we continue to celebrate and elevate the sport to new heights,’’ the committee posted on April 10.
The City of Gulf Shores and Gulf Shores & Orange Beach Tourism both support the tourney financially. And they are together they hope to make the city the permanent host for the NCAA beach volleyball championships, similar to Oklahoma City (Softball College World Series) and Omaha (Baseball College World Series).
Gulf Shores has reaped the rewards from jumping on board the emerging popularity of beach volleyball by hosting national championship contests at the Public Beach since 2012, four years before the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sanctioned it as a championship sport.
A record 10,000 spectators showed up to watch last year’s championships, and countless more viewed the contests on ESPN. In addition to its $1.5 million economic impact, the tourney helps Gulf Shores build its brand as a safe & wholesome family vacation destination. NCAA beach volleyball is the only collegiate national championship held in Alabama that is broadcast each year on national TV.
“Hosting a championship is a huge deal,” said Shawn Weaver, director of the Pleasure Island Volleyball Club (PIVC), which has played a major role in growing beach volleyball in coastal Alabama. “This thing has been held here since 2012, and it represents our state hugely.”
Thanks to Weaver and Phillip Bryant, the American Volleyball Coaches Association brought its sand volleyball national championships to Pleasure Island from 2012-2015, helping establish Gulf Shores as the nation’s home collegiate beach volleyball. A year later, the NCAA sanctioned beach volleyball as its 90th championship sport.
“It was the perfect marriage of timing, vision and resources,” recalled Kathy DeBoer, who was executive director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association.
In April 2012, Pepperdine won the inaugural AVCA Collegiate Sand (not beach) Volleyball National Championship in Gulf Shores. CBS Sports broadcast the initial contests, before the games moved to the ESPN networks.
AVCA powers had gathered for a pseudo-championship tourney in San Diego in August of 2011. But the following spring, during that first championship weekend in Gulf Shores, the sport’s guiding forces saw how the venue, the weather, the sand, the sponsors and multiple hosts could work in sync to create an event that fit perfectly what Gulf Shores was looking for as its springtime answer to October’s National Shrimp Fest.
The weekend was almost the antithesis of the Hangout Fest, which came two weeks later at the same location.
As the story goes, that first national tourney may not have even come to Gulf Shores if Southern Cal president Max Nikias did not nix it on his campus because he did not want trucks dropping loads of sand on Trojan greenspace.
USA Volleyball Gulf Coast directors Bryant and Weaver were then and still are Mount Rushmore busts among volleyball hierarchy in this region. They already knew most of the AVCA coaches. Bryant coached at UAB, one of the first schools in the nation to sponsor a beach program.
DeBoer, a world class athlete herself and coach Nina Matthies of Pepperdine first broached the idea of bringing the tourney to Gulf Shores with Bryant and Weaver.
Presented with the opportunity to host the best college beach volleyball players in the nation, Volleyball Gulf Coast’s board stepped into the void that Southern Cal left and started building the symbiotic relationships between volleyball associations, volunteers, The City of Gulf Shores, coaches, fans and players that remain strong today.
DeBoer, a former volleyball coach at Kentucky and the executive director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association, already knew Billy Payne, the head poobah at CBS Sports, whom she cajoled into covering her 2011 tourney on tape delay.
The Hangout sponsored tourney banquet and the hospitality tent. Orange Beach/Gulf Shores Tourism paid for a $15K media buy. The City of Gulf Shores kicked in $30K and helped with everything from security to labor to clean-up, according to Bryant.
But it was left for USA Volleyball Gulf Coast, already committed to coordinating volunteers, officials and most of the tourney’s logistics, to commit the money to make the tourney happen.
“It was well over $95K (to put the tourney together). But we had been good stewarts with our money. We had reserve funds and we were not going to let it go down,’’ Bryant said.
“It took a long time to amortize that money, but if it had not been for the infusion of funds from the Gulf Coast Region, that tourney would have been one and done.’’
Bryant said the tourney committee went all out with swag bags for players, and spent $20K just on apparel for its volunteers and officials.
“We threw the biggest party they had ever been to,’’ Bryant said.
Pepperdine was crowned champion in 2012, and coach Matthies, the Bear Bryant of the sport t the time, said the beaches in Gulf Shores were the nicest she had ever seen when she accepted the championship trophy on behalf of her team.
The AVCA Championship was under no obligation to return to Gulf Shores in 2013, but the coaches and players were treated so well during that first year that they did come back. And the tourney has been back where it belongs every May (save Covid year) since.