By Cassie Langdon for the NCAA
148 percent.
That’s how much NCAA women’s beach volleyball has grown over the past 10 years. The 2013-14 season had 39 teams. In 2023-24 that total is up to 97 teams, all with the same end goal: Win a national championship.
Seventeen teams will be selected for the 2024 National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship. The field will be announced Sunday, April 28, on NCAA.com and play begins Friday, May 3.
Quarterfinals and semifinals are May 4 and a national champion will be crowned May 5. All duals will take place at the Gulf Shores Public Beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama, which has been the home of the beach volleyball championship since the first championship in 2016. In 2025, the championship will move to Huntington Beach, California, for two years.
This year’s championship promises to be an exciting ending to another competitive season, which began in the beginning of February.
The Year So Far
While UCLA and USC have led in the AVCA poll all season, plenty of other teams have found success. Twenty-three different teams have been ranked at various times, with multiple programs breaking into the top five.
No team is unbeaten — in fact, no team has less than three losses. There have been plenty of upsets and close-calls all season long. Conference tournaments are under way, following more than 1,400 duals that were played in the regular season.
Who Gets In?
The full 17-team field will be announced on Sunday, April 28. Nine of the spots will come from automatic qualifiers, with the other eight teams being selected at-large from all across the country. The Women’s Beach Volleyball Committee meets throughout the season and ultimately selects the at-large teams and seeds the entire field. The committee is comprised of seven members and the chair is Ashley Armstrong, Deputy Athletic Director/SWA of Loyola Marymount University.
“We are excited to go back to Gulf Shores for the 2024 National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship. The city does an outstanding job of supporting this championship and making it a great venue to watch the best collegiate beach volleyball in the country,” Armstrong said.
“The emergence of collegiate beach volleyball has made this one of the best collegiate championship experiences to be a part of. We hope fans, parents, and beach volleyball enthusiasts buy their tickets to come to Gulf Shores and support the 17 teams competing to be the 2024 national champion.”
Conferences receiving automatic qualification include:
- ASUN Conference
- Big West Conference
- Coastal Collegiate Sports Association
- Conference USA
- Ohio Valley Conference
- PAC-12 Conference
- Southland Conference
- Sun Belt Conference
- West Coast Conference
For the eight at-large teams, the committee will use the following selection criteria to determine who is selected:
- Head-to-head competition
- Results versus common opponents
- Strength of schedule
- Overall record (must be .500 or above)
In the seven years of the championship, 22 different teams have competed for a title. Only two teams have won since the championship’s inception: Three-time defending-champion USC (5) and UCLA (2). Will 2024 be the year a new team breaks through?
Catch the Action
Instead of playing the opening round between seeds 16 and 17 on Wednesday, that match will shift to the opening spot on Friday, May 3. The winner of that dual will advance to join the other 15 seeds in a single-elimination bracket. The event will be televised by ESPN networks, with ESPNU providing live coverage on Friday, May 3. Live coverage will continue on May 4 on ESPN2 and the championship will be aired live on ESPN on May 5.
To attend the championship in person in Gulf Shores, tickets can be purchased at ncaa.com/beachvolleyball. All-session and day passes are available.
Competition begins 8 a.m. Central on Friday, May 3.
