NATIONAL TOURNEY SET APRIL 24-26 IN TENNESSEE
While the Park University women’s beach volleyball team received an automatic berth in the NAIA Women’s Beach Volleyball National Invitational by virtue of winning the Central States / Unaffiliated Group Tournament on April 11, the NAIA made the official announcement of the eight qualifiers late on Monday, April 14.
The national tournament will be held Thursday-Saturday, April 24-26 at the Greeneville (Tenn.) Beach Volleyball Complex.
The Pirates, the No. 4 ranked team in the country in the NAIAs final regular season poll on April 2, will enter the national tournament as the No. 4 seed with a 15-6 record.
All of Park’s losses this year have come to NCAA D-1 teams (Nebraska, Missouri State [2], Lindenwood) and D-2 teams (Southwest Baptist and Wayne State). In fact, since the 2022 season when the NAIA began the beach volleyball national tourney, Park has not lost a regular season match to an NAIA opponent. In those four seasons, Park is 57-25 overall with 18 of those losses at the hands of NCAA competition and the seven others have all come at the NAIA national tournament.
Park will hope to end a three-year skid of ending its season in the national quarterfinals when the Pirates begin pool play on Thursday, April 24, at 11 a.m. (Central time) against No. 8 seed Southern Oregon University (16-9). Late that afternoon (3 p.m. Central), Park will play No. 5 Arizona Christian University (11-11). The Pirates will conclude pool play on Friday, April 25, at 9 a.m. Central against No. 1 Ottawa University (Ariz.; 15-3).
Based on pool play results, all teams will compete in the national quarterfinals on Friday afternoon with matches at 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. (Central time). The national semifinals will be held on Saturday, April 26) at 10 a.m. (Central time), followed by the national championship match at 1 p.m. (Central time).
Park is the only school of the eight qualifiers not within 300 miles of an ocean/gulf — all other teams are based in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida and Oregon — and is one of four schools to have qualified all four years of the tournament (2022-25).
For the uninitiated, in beach volleyball, five two-person teams compete against their respective counterpart (No. 1 vs. No. 1, No. 2 vs. No. 2, etc.). Each match is a best-of-three with the first two sets to 21 and the third set (if needed) to 15 (all sets must be won by two points). The school that is victorious in the majority of the matches against their opponent wins.
