Tickets on sale for May 3-5 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship in Gulf Shores

Tickets on sale for May 3-5 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship in Gulf Shores
Tickets are on sale for the May 3-5 NCAA Beach Volleyball National Championship at Gulf Shores Public Beach. All-session passes at any level include complimentary access to the opening match between the no. 16 and 17 seeds on Friday morning, and single day tickets are also on sale.
The top 17 teams from around the country will cruise to Gulf  Shores to compete in the single-elimination championship that has called Gulf Shores home since its inception in 2016.
All championship weekend duals will air live on the various ESPN networks, with the championship match airing live on the flagship ESPN at 11 a.m. on Sunday, May 5. Tickets can be purchased at eventbrite.com.
Southern Cal has won the last three championships and five of the seven tourneys since the sport was fully sanctioned as an NCAA sport in 2016. UCLA won the other two titles.
Although the tourney will move to Huntington Beach, California in 2025 and 2026, Gulf Shores officials have already stated they will make a strong push for a longterm contract to have the tourney return to its proper home following those tourneys.
In April 2012, Pepperdine won the inaugural AVCA Collegiate Sand (not beach) Volleyball National Championship in Gulf Shores.
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 the antithesis of the controversial Hangout Fest, which came two weeks later at the same location and by then had already abandoned its original pitch to the city as a family event.
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 Phillip Bryant and Shawn 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.
Kathy 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 13 years later.
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.

NCAA Beach Championship Schedule
• Friday, May 3: Duals Played 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. CT
• Saturday, May 4: Duals Played 9 a.m.to 4:30 p.m. CT
• Sunday, May 5: Championship Dual TBD
AVCA Collegiate Beach Top 20 (March 26)
1 – USC; 2 – UCLA; 3 – Stanford; 4 – TCU; 5 – Florida State ; 6 – California; 7- Cal Poly; 8 – Long Beach State; 9 – Loyola Marymount; 10 – LSU; 11 – Hawai’i; 12 – Arizona State; 13 – Washington; 14 -Florida International; 15 – Georgia State; 16 – Grand Canyon; 17 – Florida Atlantic; 18 – Stetson; 19 – Arizona; 20 – Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.