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UNCW has added beach volleyball; it’s tenth women’s sport. The schedule will be released soon and the season will start in the spring of 2016. Wilmington NC is a coastal area and as such, beach volleyball is very popular in the area. UNCW joins the nearly fifty schools that now have a beach volleyball program. The beach volleyball program should be very competitive, due to the fact that the indoor program is doing so well. Coach Amy Bambenek believes that having a beach program will help her recruit better players for the indoor team. Both programs will train together to improve. The UNCW program is the first division one school in North Carolina to offer beach volleyball and one of the few in the southeast. The majority of the beach volleyball programs are in California and Florida.
*Infographic created by Jeffrey Boulden using GoogleMaps. Data retrieved from www.collegesand.org The schedule may be difficult for the first few years of the program since there aren’t many schools close by to play. As the popularity of the sport grows with the upcoming summer Olympics in Rio, more teams should be added in the southeast. The northeast and the central parts of the country do not have any programs in place yet. Beach volleyball is ideally played outside in good weather, but indoor facilities could make it possible for the sport to be played all over the country.
*Image retrieved from and property of www.vocative.com The first championship tournament will consist of an eight-team bracket with double elimination format. Each team will have five pairs of players; the first team to win three out of five matches will be the winner. UNCW’s schedule will start with six tournaments in March and April. As more and more beach programs start the question arises, where will the best players go? “With indoor volleyball, you have more teammates for support, but you also have multiple players in each position that you have to compete with for playing time. I feel like when it comes down to it, the players are going to go where they will get the most playing time and where the scholarship money is,” says former UNCW volleyball player Kelli Clear. Kelli played for UNCW from 2007 to 2010 as a defensive specialist. Beach volleyball and indoor are two very different games. Each player’s skill set determines which style suites them best. Kelli compares the two this way, “The main difference is that indoor volleyball is played consisting of a team of 6 players and beach competes with 2 players. Also, the speed of indoor volleyball is much quicker than beach. Since you only have 2 players in beach volleyball, the court is smaller but the net is the same height. In beach volleyball, you have to change the way you play in order to be more efficient.” Everything is in place for UNCW’s beach volleyball program to be a huge success. There is a lot of excitement surrounding the first season this spring and interest is growing. UNCW should be one of the nation’s top teams in the years to come. Kelli sums up UNCW’s chances this way, “I think that as long as UNCW volleyball gets enough funding to successfully recruit players, then I think they have the proper coaching and competition within the region to be competitive and successful.”
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