CCU adds women’s beach volleyball

Coastal Carolina’s athletic department is growing – technically, at least.

The university announced Friday that it will add women’s beach volleyball to its stable of sports with competition beginning next spring, though the Chanticleers will utilize the same coaches and athletes from their indoor volleyball program and not add any extra scholarships initially.

The women’s beach volleyball team becomes Coastal Carolina’s 19th athletic program and the first new addition since women’s lacrosse was added in 2011.

The Chants will compete in the sport as an affiliate member of the Atlantic Sun Conference and are still reviewing long-term facility options.

“I think there’s multiple advantages,” Coastal Carolina athletic director Matt Hogue said. “No. 1, we always have to be mindful and adherent to our gender equity plan and our Title IX plan. This certainly addresses that in terms of meeting those parameters. No. 2, I think it will align over time very nicely to the move to FBS and some of the things we’ll eventually have to do with scholarship balancing with regard to equity. …

“And this is a sport that has drawn a lot of appeal.”

Coastal Carolina announced last month that it will become a full member of the Sun Belt Conference and move up in football from the NCAA’s FCS level to FBS. That will eventually mean an additional 22 scholarships for the football program, and as Hogue said, the school will have to find a way to balance that on the women’s side.

The NCAA allows women’s beach volleyball programs to give out six scholarships, though again Coastal Carolina will not add any scholarships right away. Over time, that is an option and Hogue said the school will also look to see what it can do to add scholarships where possible to other women’s programs, including track and field, to help with that gender equity equation.

“We already had designs on adding this program,” Hogue said. “Before we would move forward at looking at any other sports we would definitely look at our current women’s sports and see if there’s areas to add.”

Adding women’s beach volleyball has been a discussion at the university for a while now and the board of trustees approved the plan earlier this year.

The NCAA has sanctioned it as an official sport with one championship division comprising 60 schools from the traditional Division I, II and III.

Hogue said other schools in the region set to compete in women’s beach volleyball include South Carolina, UNC Wilmington, College of Charleston, Kennesaw State, Georgia State and North Florida.

Competitions feature five two-person teams per school with each playing a best-of-three set match.

“I think there have been discussions about this sport probably ever since I took over and maybe even prior to that, just general discussions of how it would work,” Hogue said. “Mainly because it was growing so quickly across the country and it looked like it would become an NCAA sanctioned sport pretty quickly. There have been discussions going back 18 months to two years.”

This story was originally published October 9, 2015 at 5:06 PM with the headline "CCU adds women’s beach volleyball."