The California Interscholastic Foundation (CIF) that governs high school sports recently announced girls’ beach volleyball would become a CIF-sanctioned sport effective 2022. Coronado High School (CHS) has offered girls’ beach volleyball as a spring club sport for many years and can begin planning for the transition to a CIF sport with the spring 2022 season.
CHS junior Sarah Acuff has played CHS club beach volleyball for three years and responded to the news by sharing, “I am so excited beach volleyball is becoming a CIF sport so I can represent my high school playing the sport I love!”
Moving from a club sport to a CIF-sanctioned sport has several implications for beach volleyball:
- Athletes must follow CIF requirements regarding practice times, eligibility, recruiting, and grades.
- CIF hosts end-of-season tournaments inviting top teams from each league to compete for the San Diego section championships.
Coronado’s Central Beach is the CHS home court with five permanent courts and space for additional temporary courts to be installed as needed. Several other San Diego schools have sand courts located on a school campus and not at the beach.
Beach volleyball is played two-on-two with a regulation net height of 7 feet, 4 1/8 inches for girls and 7 feet, 11 5/8 inches for boys. The teams play two sets with the winner of each set being the first to 21 points. If needed, teams complete a third set for 15 points. Teams switch sides when the sum of the added points from both teams equals a multiple of seven.
Coronado develops beach volleyball players from a young age with a middle school program for boys and girls in grades 6 through 8. Beach volleyball coach Del Callanta also offers a variety of beach volleyball camps and clinics throughout the year.
Beach volleyball has surged in popularity in recent years partly due to its high profile during the Summer Olympics. U.S. athletes Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings gained national fame winning gold medals in beach volleyball at the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games. Women’s beach volleyball became a NCAA sport in 2014 and over 90 U.S. colleges currently offer women’s beach volleyball programs. At the high school level, over 100 schools in CIF have over 1,300 girls participating in club beach volleyball.
In the coming months, the Coronado Unified School District governing board will vote on approving girls’ beach volleyball to become a CHS CIF sport.
