Rules of Beach Volleyball

Beach volleyball is a very different sport than your typical six man indoor volleyball.  Indoor volleyball is just not very fun to watch and the number of fans in attendance has remained steady for the last 20 years.  Beach volleyball on the other hand is very popular and has been doubling it’s fan base every 2 years.  It was the most watched event in the Olympics and it’s popularity is growing by leaps and bounds.

Sand volleyball is actually going to be the newest collegiate sport and will be approved for 2010 for women only.  Hopefully it will prove to be a very popular sport in the college setting and will be available to men as well.

One thing you need to know is that beach volleyball rules are very different than the rules of indoor ball.  Lets look at some of the differences you will encounter.

In sand volleyball you may NOT:

open hand tip the ball
side set over the net
have the ball spin much after a set

The block counts as one of your 3 hits in beach, so don’t think you get that extra touch on the ball like you would if you were playing with 6 people.

You can double a hard driven ball, but that is the only time you are allowed to double a ball. You can’t do an indoor set when playing beach volleyball.

Some of you may have seen that Kerrie Walsh had weird tape on her shoulder during the Olympics and that tape was called kinesio tape. If you want to buy kinesio tape you simply need to search for it on the Internet because it is very hard to find in local stores because it is such a new concept and product.

So before you get out on the sand to play some ball make sure that you know the rules and what you can and more importantly what you cannot do.