Lexington, KY – The AVCA National Championship Selection Committee announced today that the University of Southern California, Pepperdine, Florida State University, the University of Hawai’i, Florida International University and Stetson University have been selected to compete in the third annual AVCA Collegiate Sand Volleyball National Championship. The event will be held in Gulf Shores, Alabama, May 2-4 and will also feature a sixteen team Pairs Championship. The Pairs field includes the top duos from the schools in the team competition as well as ten doubles teams identified as the ‘Best of the Rest’ from schools not in the team competition. Pairs were selected from Long Beach State, the University of North Florida, Grand Canyon University, the University of Louisiana Monroe, Jacksonville University, Saint Mary’s College of California, Loyola Marymount University, Tulane and UAB. All participants in the Championships were selected based on results from the collegiate sand volleyball season, which began in March. The 2014 season featured 40 participating programs, a landmark number that cements the status of sand volleyball as the fastest-growing NCAA emerging sport and puts it on track for NCAA Championship status by 2016.
CBS Sports Network will televise portions of the competition in a two-hour special that will have three airings:
Monday 5/26 7PM ET
Friday 5/30 7:30 PM ET
Monday 6/2 7PM ET
The event returns to Gulf Shores, the site of the championships since 2012. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism lead a group of community partners that includes the Gulf Coast Region of USA Volleyball, the city, and several local businesses that will host the event through 2015.
The Team Championship will be held on Friday and Saturday, May 2 and 3. Each school fields five doubles teams ranked in order and plays the corresponding pair from an opponent. The team-versus-team matches are decided by the school that wins three of the five flights. Play will start at 9 a.m. CT on five championship beach courts that are constructed specifically for this event. The teams have been seeded one through six with the University of Southern California earning the number one spot. The Team Championship will consist of nine school-versus-school matchups over the two days with the finals beginning at 3:30 p.m. CT on Saturday, May 3.
The Pairs Championship will begin with the ten Best of the Rest duos engaged in pool play on Friday and Saturday, May 2 and 3. The top two finishers will be seeded into Sunday’s 16-team single elimination bracket. The six top pairs from the team championship schools and the top two from the four semi-finalists will also be entered into Sunday’s Pairs Championship bracket. There will be a play-in for the final two positions. First round matches in the Pairs Championship will start at 8 a.m. CT on Sunday, May 4. The semi-finals, scheduled to start at noon, and the championship match, slated for 2 p.m., will be covered by CBS Sports Network.
Team Championship Schedule (All Times Central Daylight):
Friday, May 2
9:00 a.m. #4 Hawai’i v. #5 Florida International
10:00 a.m. #3 Florida State v. #6 Stetson
12:00 p.m. #1 USC v. Winner #4/#5
1:00 p.m. #2 Pepperdine v. Winner #3/#6
4:00 p.m. Loser #4/#5 v. Loser of 1:00 p.m. match
5:00 p.m. Loser #3/#6 v. Loser of 12:00 p.m. match
Saturday, May 3
11:00 a.m. Semi-Final #1
12:00 p.m. Semi-Final #2
3:30 p.m. Championship Match
Best of the Rest Schedule (All Times Central Daylight):
Pool play matches at 11:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m. on Friday, May 2 and 9:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 3; Play-in match at 2:00 p.m., Saturday, May 3
Pool A (Names of Players/School)
1. Delainey Aigner-Swesey/Bojana Tordorovic (LBSU)
2. Zuzana Markova/Marcela Araya (Louisiana Monroe)
3. Taylor Nyquist/Sammie Strausbaugh (Jacksonville)
4. Betsi Metter/Litara Keil (Loyola Marymount)
5. Kiriana Hirini/Bethanie Thomas (UAB)
Pool B(Names of Players/School)
1. Dagnija Medina/Kim Hildreth (North Florida)
2. Kenzie Phelps/Kelli Dallmann (Grand Canyon)
3. Tyler Jackson/Janisa Johnson (LBSU)
4. Jordan Shaw/Samantha Tinsley (Saint Mary’s)
5. Tea Juric/Jackie Wegner (Tulane)