NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship May 5-7 at Gulf Place

NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship May 5-7 at Gulf Place
16 schools will play single elimination matches at Gulf Shores Public Beach

By Fran Thompson
The 17-team field for the May 5-7 National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship at Gulf Shores Public Beach, whittled down from the 93 NCAA institutions sponsoring the sport, is set, as the selection committee added eight at-large teams to join the nine teams who had already secured their spots by winning conference championships on April 30.
Conferences receiving automatic qualification included ASUN, Big West, Coastal Collegiate Association Beach Volleyball, Conference USA, Ohio Valley, PAC-12, Southland, Sun Belt and West Coast.
The opening round of the championship will be held Wednesday, May 3 with UT Martin and
A&M-Corpus Christi playing at 4 p.m. for the right to face top seeded UCLA on May 5 at 9 a.m.
Other May 5 opening matches will pit Cal against Long Beach State at 10 a.m., Florida State against FIU at 11 a.m., LSU against Florida Atlantic at noon, Stetson against Texas Christian at 1 p.m., Stanford against Grand Canyon at 2 p.m., Georgia State against Southern Cal at 3 p.m., and Hawaii against Loyola Marymount at 4 p.m.
Quarterfinals are scheduled on the hour beginning at 9 a.m. on May 6. The semifinals will be May 6 at 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., and the championship match will be played on May 7 at 11 a.m.
Hosted by Alabama-Birmingham, the entire tourney will be televised live by ESPN networks. Co-hosts City of Gulf Shores and Gulf Shores/Orange Beach Tourism are kicking in $190,00 each in support.
TCU ranked no. 1 for most of the season, will come into the tourney as the second seed. Southern Cal is seeded third and Florida State and LSU are right behind them.
Last year, the tourney was played with a 16-team field for the first time. Eight single-elimination duels were played on the first day of the four-day event. The remaining eight teams then played the traditional double-elimination format over the final.
This year’s format is single elimination from the start, and while the format is a departure from what has traditionally been conducted in beach volleyball, it places it in line with most NCAA championships.
Southern Cal claimed the first two championships, beating Florida State in 2016 and Pepperdine in 2017. The 2020 tourney was a Covid casualty, and USC beat UCLA in the 2021 final and Florida State in the 2022 final championship match.
This is the first year the committee selected teams without being required to select a certain number of teams from each geographic region. This is also the first year for automatic conference champion qualifiers. The minimum number of teams for a conference to qualify for an automatic bid to any NCAA championship tournaments is six.
Tickets are available at eventbrite.net or at the gate.
• Weekend Passes (May 5-7) – NCAA Fan Experience All-Session: $250; Courtside Seating All-Session: $85; General Admission All-Session: $55.
• Day Passes (May 5-7) – Courtside Seating: $35; General Admission: $25.
• Opening Round Day Passes (May 3) – Courtside Seating: $15; General Admission: $15.
Additionally, the Gulf Coast Region “BeachFest” National Beach Tour Qualifier will take place May 5-7 adjacent to the NCAA site and feature more than 375 elite junior beach teams.
Gulf Shores will also host the tourney in 2024. It then tentatively moves to Huntington Beach in California for two years. Gulf Shores City Council has already made it clear that it plans to submit a bid to host the tourney for as long as possible beginning in 2027.
Beach Volleyball is the fastest-growing sport in the NCAA with nearly 180 participating institutions across all levels of the NCAA, NAIA and NJCAA. Fifty-five of the 176 colleges that sponsor beach volleyball are in the South.
Arizona was the first state to make girls’ beach volleyball a sanctioned high school sport. California soon followed, as did Florida and Louisiana.