Grow the game indeed.
The University of South Carolina (who do sometimes go by USC… I dunno, #westcoastbias here, but that just seems wrong to be) announced today that they’ll be adding sand volleyball as their 21st varsity sport, effective in 2014. I’m not sure how they’re counting, because it looks like they have only 18 right now, or are they adding two more in addition to sand volleyball? Whoa, I wrote sand volleyball without the quotes. Alert the media 😛
The program will be led in its first season by Moritz Moritz, previously known as Kevan Tuell (why do people do this?), who had served as an assistant coach on the indoor volleyball team the last two seasons. That position will now need to be filled as well. South Carolina also announced the construction of a dedicated playing facility near their tennis and football arenas.
It seems the school’s big rivalry will probably be with Alabama, as the Crimson Tide are the only other Southeastern Conference school to sponsor sand volleyball. So far anyway. Sand volleyball is closing in on the magic number of 50 schools to have an NCAA-sanctioned championship. It won’t happen this year, and probably not next year either, but at this rate it could be a reality in 2015.
So it’s exciting news simply because the game continues to grow, but also because it’s in a non-obvious place. Of the 30 or so schools that currently sponsor sand volleyball, all but 4 or 5 are in California or Florida (and one is Hawaii anyway). We’ll probably never see sand volleyball in a place like Wisconsin or Maine, but as always, the more the merrier.
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