You see it at the summer Olympics. You see it at the beach. You see it at hotels, in backyards and in apartment complexes. Finally, you may be seeing sand volleyball in the NCAA.
Last year sand volleyball was added to the NCAA’s emerging sports list, which means there is a 10-year window for one of the most popular Olympic sports to become an official sport on college campuses around the country.
Athletic director Greg Byrne said Mississippi State is excited about the opportunity and is eager to find out if the Bulldogs could be competing on the sand courts in the near future.
“We are pleased about recent legislation that has sand volleyball as an emerging NCAA sport,” he said. “We will be monitoring the interest within the SEC and deciding whether it will be a sport that will make sense for us at Mississippi State over the next few years.”
Because it has been added to the emerging sports list, schools are free to start adding sand volleyball now. However, teams will not begin competing until the spring of 2012, so there is time for schools to decide.
Indoor volleyball coach Jenny Hazelwood said she is very excited about the opportunity for MSU, but said, like with any outdoor sport, there are varying degrees of interest from other universities.
“Cold weather schools aren’t fans of it,” she said. “Schools on the beach are, of course, all about it. Schools with more money are thinking, ‘This is a great opportunity for us,’ while schools with less are saying, ‘How can we afford it?'”
For the NCAA to begin holding championships for a sport, at least 40 of its member institutions must field a team. So far, the University of Southern California is the only school which has committed to sand volleyball, and Hazelwood said getting out there as one of the first to follow suit could be very beneficial for MSU.
“We’d be able to have some national publicity if we were one of the schools early on to say this is what we’re doing,” she said. “But we want to do it the right way. We want to make sure the structure is in place. We’re going to make sure that we’ve got all the things we need to be successful because we’d want to compete right away.”
Competing right away could be a very real possibility for the Dawgs, as the SEC only requires four teams to participate in a sport to have a conference championship. Hazelwood said Florida and South Carolina have shown significant interest in adding sand volleyball, but also said there are schools at the top of the conference in the indoor game who have said they would not add the sand version immediately.
Another advantage is assistant volleyball coach Branden Higa, who has experience teaching the sand game and Hazelwood said she hired him with the knowledge of sand volleyball possibly being added at MSU.
One of the biggest things adding momentum to sand volleyball around the country is the implications it has on Title IX. Title IX is a law enforcing equality at universities between, among other things, men’s and women’s sports, and there are many schools who are still not Title IX compliant. The MSU athletic department is currently within Title IX regulations, so the addition of sand volleyball, a women’s sport, would pave the way for another men’s sport on campus.
The MSU athletics compliance office said it is has yet to determine what impact the volleyball addition would have, and which men’s sport could be added. While there has been much clamor for the addition of men’s soccer over the years, another, and probably more likely, option is indoor track. Women’s track competes in both outdoor and indoor, while the men are currently held to only outdoor events.
Senior Dorey Gray has played on the indoor volleyball team four years, and said she wishes the outdoor game could have been added soon enough for her to play.
“It is one of the greatest games out there and yet one of the most unknown,” she said. “It takes a tremendous amount of skill and conditioning to master, but once the level is high enough it is more fun than any indoor game could be.”
The SEC actually has a beach tournament which is entering its third year, and MSU has competed each year. Hazelwood said it is just another edge for the Dawgs.
“It’s about getting ahead of the curve,” she said. “By 2012, we’re not going to be at year one, we’re going to be at year five.”
Hazelwood said it is too early to know for sure if MSU will add sand volleyball, but she certainly hopes the dream becomes a reality. She said the sport would mean a lot more than just swimsuits and sunshine for the Bulldogs.
“We’d have a really strong staff to be in a really good spot, and it’d be a huge recruiting tool,” she said. “As much as people love to watch it, girls enjoy playing it. It’s going to get to where these events are going to be televised. Getting whatever exposure we can for people to see what a special place this is, I think that’s a great opportunity.”