AVCA’s DeBoer: When I fell in love with college beach volleyball
By Kathy DeBoer, AVCA Executive Director
In 2010 adding beach volleyball to the NCAA Emerging Sports list for women was simply a pragmatic maneuver designed to position volleyball for future growth. The number of girls playing high school volleyball continued to surge, making roster positions on college teams scarce, and 70% of AVCA members were in favor. As a Michigander and former volleyball coach, I had no passion for the beach game much less any experience of sand between my toes.
Once the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics added beach volleyball (which they called sand volleyball) to the list, coaches with first year teams insisted the AVCA offer a season-ending championship. In a moment of serendipity, Gulf Shores, Alabama, had just received tourism money from the Deep Water Horizon settlement, and offered their, at the time hidden gem of a beach, as a host.
On a picture-perfect weekend in late April of 2012, the AVCA hosted the first Collegiate Sand Volleyball National Championships. Pepperdine beat Long Beach for the team title with Florida State and the College of Charleston rounding out the field.
The next day, the top 16 pairs competed for the AVCA Individual Championship. Summer Ross, now playing professionally, and future AVCA Thirty Under 30 award winner, Caitlyn Racich squared off in the final match against Long Beach’s top pair of Caitlin Ledoux and Tara Roenicke, both of whom would also become professional players post college. After a split of the first two sets, the Long Beach duo pulled into a triple-match-point lead at 14-11. Spectators, most from southeast Alabama having never witnessed a live beach volleyball match, stood five-deep around the court. With Racich at the service line and Ross taking control at the net, the Pepperdine pair scored five straight points to win the set 16-14 and clinch the title.
After the awards presentation and the obligatory dunking of coaches in the Gulf, a still sweating, soaking wet Caitlyn Racich approached me with tears in her eyes.
“This has been the best weekend of my entire life,” she said wrapping me into a full-body, sunscreen-slimy bear hug. “I love this sport so much and never, ever, imagined I’d be able to play it in college. I can’t thank you enough.”
That was the moment I transitioned from a pragmatic administrator to an advocate for kids chasing a dream. We only had 15 teams that first year, but we picked up 14 more the next year and 11 in year three to get to the NCAA-mandated 40 needed for a championship — the fastest ascent of any new sport in NCAA history. While I’m proud of the record, it was that bear hug that won me over.
In 2016, the NCAA held its first National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship. By that time Gulf Shores was no longer an undiscovered corner of paradise and the championship had become a destination for spectators, youth beach players hoping to catch a college coach’s eye, and the beach volleyball community.
Unlike the professional level, beach is a team sport in college with each school fielding five pairs stacked by ability. Winning three of the five matches clinches a dual, and, in the Championship, advancement in the bracket.
At the 2019 NCAA National Collegiate Championship, #5 seeded LSU and #8 seeded Stetson both shocked their higher-seeded, California-based opponents in the first round. The two upstarts had played each other to a 2-2 tie just as the five’s pairs was starting their match-determining third set.
Everyone on the beach ran for the five’s court. Neither pair had an elite blocker or attacker, but all four players were excellent passers and had an arsenal of shots. Rallies resembled a clay court tennis match as each team moved its opponent around the court looking for an opening, legs growing wobblier with each extended rally.
The crowd around the court got so deep that another congregated at the base of a huge, elevated video board showing the action from cameras on towers; still others crossed the street to the Hang Out Restaurant where all 40 television sets were tuned to the live ESPN broadcast. Each point was celebrated with a collective shout from either the LSU fans or the Stetson fans and was echoed a few seconds later by the spectators watching on the delayed feed in the Hang Out.
Finally, at 15-13, the exhausted LSU fives found themselves at the bottom of a dogpile of exuberant teammates; the ninth and tenth best players keeping alive the national championship hopes for their teammates — an unforgettable, Rudy-like moment when the bottom carried the top!
May 4-8, 2022, the National Collegiate Beach Volleyball Championship returns to Gulf Shores for the 10th time. Today, over 90 NCAA institutions sponsor teams and over 1,500 women have what Caitlyn Racich never dreamt was possible. And, thanks to bracket expansion, 16 teams, each with five single-point-scoring pairs, will fight for each other to win a collective crown.
Take it from a dispassionate bean counter turned ardent fan: Make the trip to this Championship!
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