Ohio Valley Conference adds beach volleyball to its lineup of sports – Nashville Post

The Ohio Valley Conference announced Tuesday that it has added beach volleyball as the 19th sport it sponsors. The addition is effective with the 2019-20 academic year and the regular season will commence in February.

The OVC becomes the fifth Division I conference to offer beach volleyball, exclusively a women’s sport in the NCAA, but the first with no member institutions along a coastline. The other conferences that offer it are the Atlantic Sun, Big West, Pac-12 and West Coast.

Five OVC members — Austin Peay, Eastern Kentucky, Jacksonville State, Morehead State and UT Martin — currently field teams, and Chattanooga will join as an affiliate member in the sport, which will mean six schools for the first year of competition.

All six will compete in the conference tournament at a location and time to be determined.

“Given the enthusiasm building around the sport of beach volleyball, we are excited to take this step for our future and give our student-athletes a home in their primary conference,” OVC Commissioner Beth DeBauche said in a release.

The NCAA first recognized beach volleyball as an emerging sport in 2012 and has staged a national championship each of the past four years. At the end of last season, 75 schools had programs.

The OVC is based in Brentwood and consists of 12 full-time members. Five are in Tennessee (Belmont, Tennessee State, Austin Peay, Tennessee Tech and UT Martin) with the rest in Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Alabama.