NCAA beach volleyball championship
The NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship is an NCAA-sanctioned tournament to determine the national champions of collegiate women's beach volleyball. It is a National Collegiate Championship featuring teams from Division I, Division II and Division III, and is the 90th, and newest, NCAA championship event.
It was the first new NCAA championship to be created since the NCAA Division III Men's Volleyball Championship in 2012, and the first for women since the NCAA Bowling Championship in 2004.
USC have been the most successful program, with six national titles.
History
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 the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program. As such, a separate championship had been contested annually, since 2012, by the American Volleyball Coaches Association. Before 2012 several championships were televised by Collegiate Nationals. As of 2015, over 50 schools 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.
Structure
2016–2021
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.
- ASUN Conference
- Big West Conference
- Coastal Collegiate Sports Association
- Ohio Valley Conference
- Pac-12 Conference
- Southland Conference
- West Coast Conference
2022, 2025-present
From 2022 onwards, the championship tournament was expanded to 16 teams. In 2025 the number of conferences eligible for an Automatic Bid returned to 8 and the Tournament returned to 16 teams.- Atlantic Sun Conference
- Big West Conference
- Conference USA
- Mountain Pacific Sports Federation
- Ohio Valley Conference
- Southland Conference
- Sun Belt Conference
- West Coast Conference
20232024
Starting in 2023, the tournament switched to a standard single elimination bracket from the partial double elimination bracket system used before. The field was also expanded to 17 teams to allow for nine automatic qualifiers.Result by school and by year
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.- National Champion
- National Runner-up
- 3rd place
- 4th place
- Tied for 5th place
- Tied for 7th place
- Round of 16
- Semifinals
- Quarterfinals
- Round of 16
- Play-in Round
| School | Conference | # | T4 | T2 | CH | [2016 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship|] | [2017 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship|] | [2018 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship|] | [2019 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship|] | [2021 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship|] | [2022 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship|] | [2023 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship|] | [2024 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship|] | [2025 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship|] |
| School | Conference | |||||||||||||
| ' | MPSF | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | ' | ' | ' | ' | ' | ' | |||
| [UCLA Bruins beach volleyball|] | MPSF | 9 | 8 | 5 | 2 | ' | ' | |||||||
| [TCU Horned Frogs|] | Big 12 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ' | ||||||||
| ' | Big 12 | 9 | 5 | 3 | - | |||||||||
| [Loyola Marymount Lions|] | West Coast | 5 | 3 | 1 | - | |||||||||
| ' | West Coast | 4 | 1 | 1 | - | |||||||||
| [Hawaii Rainbow Wahine beach volleyball|] | Big West | 7 | 4 | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | MPSF | 8 | 3 | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | Big West | 5 | 2 | - | - | |||||||||
| [Stanford Cardinal|] | MPSF | 5 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| [Georgia State Panthers beach volleyball|] | Sun Belt | 5 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| [Stetson Hatters beach volleyball|] | ASUN | 4 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | MPSF | 4 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | Big West | 4 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| [Florida Atlantic Owls|] | CUSA | 3 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | Southland | 3 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| [South Carolina Gamecocks|] | Big 12 | 2 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | CUSA | 2 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| [Grand Canyon Antelopes|] | MPSF | 2 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | ASUN | 2 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | Ohio Valley | 2 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | Ohio Valley | 2 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| [Arizona Wildcats beach volleyball|] | Big 12 | 1 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| [Texas Longhorns|] | MPSF | 1 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| ' | Big 12 | 1 | - | - | - | |||||||||
| MPSF | 1 | - | - | - | ||||||||||
| [Boise State Broncos|] | Big 12 | 1 | - | - | - |