It is official: after four years of NCAA collegiate play, the Big West Conference has added beach volleyball as a formal conference sport which will begin league play in 2016.
Beach Volleyball joins the Big West: Head Coach Mike Campbell discusses the additionBeach volleyball has joined the line-up as the 17th official sport for the Big West Conference, with four schools in the league, including Long Beach State, already fielding a beach volleyball team.
Other schools in the league currently with a beach volleyball team are Hawai’i, Cal Poly and Cal State Northridge. The Big West added Sacramento State and Cal State Bakersfield teams for the 2016 season for the league’s six-team minimum requirement.
Since the sport’s inception in the NCAA in 2012, a total of 46 Division I schools have a beach volleyball team.
The 49ers finished with an overall record of 16-7 and ranked second overall in the nation in 2015. They were also runners-up in the American Volleyball Coaches Association Collegiate Sand Championships. LBSU beach volleyball head coach Mike Campbell sat down with the Daily 49er to discuss his thoughts on the addition of beach volleyball to the league.
What are your thoughts about the Big West adding beach volleyball to the conference?
I think it’s great in terms of progression for the sport. It allows us as a conference to have an automatic bid into the sand championships, which to me I think is huge because the success not only we have had, but Hawai’i who is also in our conference. I think we have earned that spot so it’s nice to see that the Big West is recognizing that and we can have a say in that Championship.
How does having a conference championship change affect your team?
The format will be interesting because it’s six teams. It’s not going to be a clean format, it will be a little sticky because some teams will have to play a couple of extra matches, so we’ll see how that goes. I think it’s great preparation for the end of the year, for the NCAA championships. It’s great to see the Big West jumping on board with this because it is an emerging sport. We’ve done so well that it’s nice to see them getting on board with us.
What do you see next for the sport, now that beach volleyball has been added?
I think it’s just the growth of the sport. I think most importantly it’s at the high school level seeing clubs popping up all over the country. It’s a new avenue for volleyball in general and athletes in general, it’s a new route they can take. If they don’t like indoor they can play beach volleyball. It’s huge on the Olympic platform, but it hasn’t been so much as a junior sport so it’s nice to see that.
How do you see your team performing this year?
I think we’ll do pretty well. In the Big West, with the six teams, I think it will be between us and Hawai’i, but we’ve got a lot of new faces. We lost a lot of leadership last year, so we’ve got a lot of new faces, but we also have experienced kids in terms of them playing for USA Volleyball and from a CVBA standpoint, they are all rated players. It’s just how quickly can they adapt to the speed of a college game. Things move quicker so we’ll have to get them ready. Hopefully we can put it all together.