The 2022 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship (officially the 2022 National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship) was an intercollegiate tournament to determine the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) women's beach volleyball national champion for the 202122 season. The sixth edition of the tournament was held from May 4 to 8, 2022, at Gulf Place Public Beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The 2022 championship featured a 16-team field for the first time, doubled from previous years, as well as the addition of an opening knockout round before the traditional eight-team double-elimination bracket. Eight of the participating schools automatically qualified by winning their respective conference tournaments, while the other eight were given either a regional or an at-large bid by the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Committee. The tournament was broadcast on ESPN2, ESPN3 and ESPNU.
Defending champion USC Trojans were the pre-tournament favorites and entered as the top seed. They had a lineup that included the likes of 2020 Olympian Tina Graudina and then-reigning U19 world champions Megan Kraft and Delaynie Maple. The Trojans had a dominant run in the championship, dropping just one individual pairs match en route to the final. The biggest tournament upsets came from the tenth-seeded Georgia State Panthers, who beat the seventh-seeded Grand Canyon Antelopes and the second-seeded TCU Horned Frogs before being knocked out of the elimination bracket by the Loyola Marymount Lions. Meanwhile, scheduling changes due to inclement weather meant that the Florida State Seminoles ended up playing three duals on the third day of competition; the Seminoles suffered a loss to USC in the winners bracket before overcoming the LSU Tigers, Loyola Marymount Lions and UCLA Bruins in the elimination bracket to set up a rematch against the Trojans. In the championship dual, USC defeated Florida State 31 to win their fourth NCAA title. The final three days of the NCAA championship were attended by a live audience of 10,151, setting a new tournament record.
Background The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) began sponsoring women's beach volleyball as a championship sport in 2016, and the sport has since experienced rapid growth at the collegiate level, with a 500 percent increase in women's collegiate beach volleyball programs in the United States from 2011 to 2020. The NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship is the tournament held at the end of every regular season to determine the women's national collegiate champion across all NCAA divisions. It has been held annually since the inaugural 2016 event, and 2022 marked its sixth edition. The 2022 tournament was held in Gulf Shores, Alabama, the same venue that hosted all five previous NCAA championships, and was co-hosted by Gulf Shores Orange Beach Sports & Events, the city of Gulf Shores and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Popularized on the beaches of California in the 1920s, beach volleyball is a sport played by two teams on a sand court. At the professional level, teams consist of a pair of players who compete in best-of-three-set matches, where the first two sets are played to 21 points and the third set, if necessary, is played to 15 points; each set must be won by a minimum two-point lead. Conversely, NCAA beach volleyball is played using a flighted team-dual format such that in an NCAA dual, each team fields five individual pairs who are ranked from 1 to No. 5 by skill level, and each pair plays a best-of-three-set match against their corresponding pair on the other team. The first team to win three of the five pairs' matches wins the dual.
The NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship had historically been an eight-team double-elimination tournament, in which all participating teams were selected by the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Committee. However, with the growing popularity of the collegiate sport, the NCAA doubled the field for the 2022 championship, adding a 16-team single-elimination opening round that led into the established eight-team double-elimination bracket. Along with the expanded field, the qualification process introduced eight automatic bids that teams earned by winning their respective conference tournaments.
Format and venue
The 2022 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship was a 16-team tournament held from May 4 to 8, 2022. The tournament began on Wednesday, May 4, with eight single-elimination duals. The winning teams then advanced to a double-elimination bracket that began play on Friday, May 6, until a national champion was determined on Sunday, May 8.
The tournament took place on one site at the Gulf Place Public Beach in Gulf Shores, which had been set up with five playing courts and five practice courts. Over the years, the playing conditions at the Gulf Shores venue have been characterized by several factors; namely the compact sand that makes it easier for players to move and jump, the strong winds, and the possibility of rain during that time of the year.
Participating teams Of the 86 eligible NCAA teams, a total of 16 qualified for the tournament and were seeded from No. 1 to No. 16. Eight of the teams earned automatic bids by winning their respective conference tournaments. The remaining eight bids were allocated by the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Committee, with two teams from the eastern region of the country and two teams from the western region chosen as regional qualifiers, and the final four teams selected at large. The qualifying teams and seeding order were announced by the committee on April 30, 2022.
Automatic bids The following eight teams earned automatic bids by winning their conference tournament. TeamConferenceDate qualifiedWinloss recordAppearanceLast bidTexas A&M–Corpus Christi IslandersSouthlandApril 24, 202221121stStetson HattersASUNApril 25, 202223163rd2019Cal Poly MustangsBig WestApril 30, 202223163rd2021Florida State SeminolesCCSAApril 30, 20222896th2021USC TrojansPac-12April 29, 20223216th2021Georgia State PanthersC-USAApril 30, 202226112nd2016Loyola Marymount LionsWest CoastApril 30, 20222972nd2021UT Martin SkyhawksOhio ValleyApril 30, 20221781st
Regional and at-large bids The following eight teams were allocated either a regional or an at-large bid by the NCAA selection committee. TeamConferenceBid typeWinloss recordAppearanceLast bidRefFlorida Atlantic OwlsC-USAEast Region22101stTCU Horned FrogsCCSAEast Region3832nd2021Grand Canyon AntelopesWest Region2661stUCLA BruinsPac-12West Region3176th2021California Golden BearsPac-12At-Large26121stHawaii Rainbow WāhineBig WestAt-Large24165th2019LSU TigersCCSAAt-Large30105th2021Stanford CardinalPac-12At-Large24112nd2021
Preview
From its inception in 2016 to 2021, only two teams had won the NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship: the USC Trojans (three titles and defending champion: 2016, 2017, 2021) and the UCLA Bruins (two titles: 2018 and 2019). Both teams were in the running for the title once again in 2022. Led by Dain Blanton for the third year, USC had a much-heralded 202122 roster that was compared to the Marvel Comics' Avengers by Volleyball Magazine Travis Mewhirter. It included the likes of 2020 Olympian Tina Graudina of Latvia and then-reigning U19 world champions Megan Kraft and Delaynie Maple. Seeded No. 1 and topping the American Volleyball Coaches Association's (AVCA) rankings, the Trojans entered the NCAA tournament as the favorites to win. They were on a 31-dual winning streak, with their only dual loss coming at the start of the season to UCLA, whom they later beat in the Pac-12 final. Meanwhile, the Bruins were ranked third in the nation and received the No. 3 seed. A finalist at the 2021 NCAA championship, UCLA's roster featured six returning starters from last year's lineup, including AVCA first-team All-Americans Lexy Denaburg and Abby Van Winkle. Head coach Stein Metzger was in his tenth year with the program.
In the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (CCSA), the fourth-ranked Florida State Seminoles had upset the second-ranked TCU Horned Frogs in the final to win their sixth consecutive conference title. Both teams headed to the NCAA tournament as the No. 5 and No. 2 seeds, respectively. The national runners-up in 2016 and 2018, Florida State's head coach Brooke Niles said it had been a rocky year for her team, which posted a 98 winloss record against the top-ten teams, including six losses to the top three. Meanwhile, TCU had started off the season with one of the most anticipated rosters thanks to several key transfers and freshmen recruited by head coach Hector Gutierrez, such as former European junior championship silver medalist Ana Vergara of Spain.
Rounding out the top six seeds were the Loyola Marymount Lions (No. 4) and LSU Tigers (No. 6). Loyola Marymount were coming off their third consecutive West Coast tournament win, and head coach John Mayer believed this was his program's "most talent[ed]" lineup yet. On LSU's side, there had been a lot of uncertainty over the team in the preseason. After a highly successful 202021 season, the Tigers experienced a huge turnover that resulted in the loss of eight of their ten previous starters. Led by head coach Russell Brock, LSU recorded just one win against one of the top five seeds over the regular season. Lee Feinswog, writing for Volleyball Magazine, observed in his tournament preview that the top six seeds had dominated the 202122 season, having only suffered a combined total of 37 losses, mostly to each other.
Bracket The tournament bracket was as follows:
Dual summaries Wednesday
Day one of the competition saw all 16 teams competing on a five-court setup in the opening knockout round. Of the eight duals played, seven ended with the higher-seeded team winning. The only upset came when tenth-seeded Georgia State beat seventh-seeded Grand Canyon 32, marking the Panthers' first-ever dual win at the NCAA tournament. Grand Canyon took an early lead with a straight-set victory at the top pairs flight before Georgia State evened the dual with a three-set victory at the fourth flight. The deadlock continued as they split three-set victories at the No. 3 and No. 5 pairs. The deciding match came down to the second flight, where Georgia State's Eden Hawes and Maddy Delmonte came back from being one set down to win 13–21, 21–17, 16–14.
LSU, Florida State and UCLA were all pushed to a deciding three-set match in their 32 dual victories. LSU were tied at two dual points apiece against California before their No. 5 pairing of Sierra Caffo and Ashlyn Rasnick-Pope defeated California's Natalie Martin and Alex Young-Gomez in three sets to give them the victory. Meanwhile, Florida State was tied 22 in their dual against Cal Poly when their No. 3 pairing of Anna Long and Kate Privett found themselves down 10–12 in the third-set tiebreaker of the deciding match. Long and Privett eventually turned the set around, winning 25–23, 21–16, 15–13 to clinch the dual for the Seminoles. Similarly, the UCLAStetson dual came down to the second pairs' court, where UCLA's Jaden Whitmarsh and Devon Newberry fell behind in the third set before rallying to beat their Stetson opponents 19–21, 21–16, 15–13. Stetson coach Kristina Hernandez said about the loss: "We can't be disappointed with the effort. I thought we could pull it off again (like in 2019). But they're all freshmen and sophomores, so we'll be back."