NCAA Championship Info & Tidbits

NCAA Championship Info & Tidbits

• USC, Florida State and UCLA are the others.
• USC won the first NCAA title in 2016 and repeated in 2017. UCLA won back-to-back championships in 2018-19. The 2020 championship was not played due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When it returned, USC won its third NCAA title in 2021 to start a four year title run. TCU broke the state of California’s dominance in the tourney last May.
• Each match will feature 10 players on each team split into pairs. Two team coaches and one volunteer are allowed to be courtside and actively coach during game breaks.
• Each pairs match is won by the first team to win two sets. Each set is played to 21, and a team must win by at least two points. If the sets are tied 1-1, the decisive third set is played to 15. The winner must again win by at least two points.
• Teams also switch sides every seven points, to account for uneven sun exposure.
• There are four rounds of competition to crown the national champion.
• The tourney was eight-team, double-elimination with a single-elimination final from 2016-2021. It became 16 teams and stayed double-elimination in 2022 before moving to its current format single elimination format.
• All four women representing Team USA in the 2024 Olympics (Taryn Kloth-Kristen Nuss and Kelly Cheng-Sara Hughes) played in Gulf Shores. Beach volleyball was introduced to the Olympics as a demonstration sport in the 1992. The sport was officially added to the Olympics in 1996.