Current season, competition or edition: 2025 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship | |
 | |
| Sport | College beach volleyball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2016 |
| No. of teams | 16 |
| Country |  United States |
| Most recent champion | TCU (1) |
| Most titles | USC (6) |
| Broadcasters | ESPN,TruTV,TBS |
| Official website | https://www.ncaa.com/sports/beach-volleyball |
TheNCAA Beach Volleyball Championship is anNCAA-sanctioned tournament to determine the national champions of collegiate women'sbeach volleyball. It is aNational Collegiate Championship featuring teams fromDivision I,Division II andDivision III, and is the 90th, and newest, NCAA championship event.[1][2]
It was the first new NCAA championship to be created since theNCAA Division III Men's Volleyball Championship in 2012, and the first for women since theNCAA Bowling Championship in 2004.
USC have been the most successful program, with six national titles.
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 theNCAA Emerging Sports for Women program (which includedwomen's ice hockey,bowling,rowing, andwater polo in the past). As such, a separate championship had been contested annually, since 2012, by theAmerican Volleyball Coaches Association. Before 2012 several championships were televised byCollegiate 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]
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.
From 2022 onwards, the championship tournament was expanded to 16 teams. As of spring 2025, eight conferences have enough teams to receive an automatic bid to the tournament, while other conferences still sponsor the sport but don't receive one.
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]
Starting in 2023, the tournament switched to a standard single elimination bracket from more complicated partially double elimination brackets used before.[5] The field was also expanded to 17 teams to allow for nine automatic qualifiers.[6]
| 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 theCOVID-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 | ||||||||||
| 2027 Details | ||||||||||
| 2028 Details | ||||||||||
| 2029 Details | ||||||||||
| 2030 Details | ||||||||||
| 2031 Details | ||||||||||
| Team | # | Years |
|---|---|---|
| USC | 6 | 2016,2017,2021,2022,2023,2024 |
| UCLA | 2 | 2018,2019 |
| TCU | 1 | 2025 |
Twenty-one 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.
2016 to 2022
| 2023 to present
|
| School | Conference | # | T4 | T2 | CH | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USC | MPSF | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | CH | CH | 4 | RU | CH | CH | CH | CH | QF |
| UCLA | MPSF | 9 | 8 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 5 | CH | CH | RU | 3 | RU | RU | SF |
| TCU | Big 12 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 7 | SF | • | CH | ||||
| Florida State | Big 12 | 9 | 5 | 3 | - | RU | 4 | RU | 5 | 5 | RU | SF | QF | QF |
| Loyola Marymount | West Coast | 5 | 3 | 1 | - | 3 | 4 | QF | QF | RU | ||||
| Pepperdine | West Coast | 4 | 1 | 1 | - | 5 | RU | 5 | 7 | |||||
| Hawaii | Big West | 7 | 4 | - | - | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | • | • | • | ||
| LSU | MPSF | 8 | 3 | - | - | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 5 | QF | SF | • | |
| Cal Poly | Big West | 5 | 2 | - | - | 7 | 5 | • | SF | SF | ||||
| Stanford | MPSF | 5 | - | - | - | 7 | • | QF | QF | QF | ||||
| Georgia State | Sun Belt | 5 | - | - | - | 7 | 5 | • | • | • | ||||
| Stetson | ASUN | 4 | - | - | - | 7 | 5 | • | • | |||||
| California | MPSF | 4 | - | - | - | • | QF | QF | • | |||||
| Long Beach State | Big West | 4 | - | - | - | 7 | • | • | • | |||||
| Florida Atlantic | CUSA | 3 | - | - | - | 7 | • | • | ||||||
| Texas A&M–Corpus Christi | Southland | 3 | - | - | - | • | • | • | ||||||
| South Carolina | Big 12 | 2 | - | - | - | 7 | 7 | |||||||
| FIU | CUSA | 2 | - | - | - | 7 | • | |||||||
| Grand Canyon | MPSF | 2 | - | - | - | • | • | |||||||
| North Florida | ASUN | 2 | - | - | - | • | • | |||||||
| UT Martin | Ohio Valley | 2 | - | - | - | • | P | |||||||
| Chattanooga | Ohio Valley | 2 | - | - | - | P | • | |||||||
| Arizona | Big 12 | 1 | - | - | - | 5 | ||||||||
| Texas | MPSF | 1 | - | - | - | QF | ||||||||
| Arizona State | Big 12 | 1 | - | - | - | • | ||||||||
| Washington | MPSF | 1 | - | - | - | • | ||||||||
| Boise State | Big 12 | 1 | - | - | - | • |
Turner Sports held broadcast rights to the tournament for the first two years (2016 and 2017), with early-round coverage airing onTruTV, and the championship game broadcast onTBS.[7][8] In December 2017,ESPN signed a multiyear agreement to broadcast the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Championship through 2022.[9]
| NCAA | | |
|---|---|---|
| Division I |
| |
| Division II |
| |
| Division III |
| |
| Single-division or National Collegiate sports and championships |
| |
| Litigation | ||
| Related topics | ||
