FanPost

NCAA adds women's beach volleyball for 2012

No, NU does not have plans to add varsity women's beach volleyball (actually, sand volleyball is what the NCAA is calling it).  An athletic department spokesman told me that much. But with the NCAA adding sand volleyball as a sport this year, maybe it's a sport to keep an eye on, if NU decides to expand its offerings.  We've already got a beach, and it seems like a relatively cheap sport to operate, with just six scholarships when it becomes fully official.

Granted, NU is in the Midwest, where our beach isn't warm enough to use until about May. That means we'd be likely to operate at a handicap, just as our baseball team does against schools in the Sun Belt and out West.  Then again, the cold weather and geographic misfit doesn't seem to have kept our women's lacrosse, tennis and softball teams from being competitive.  Then again then again, those sports don't really involve women wearing skimpy outfits on a beach.

Anyway, it's just some food for thought. I'm not exactly sure why the NCAA isn't approving men's sand volleyball as a sport, but it does seem like women's sand volleyball is a relatively cheap, exciting sport that NU could add if it saw fit to do so. Certainly, it'd be cheaper than ice hockey or men's lacrosse or crew, which are the sports that people typically lobby for.