Men's Beach Volleyball

Mens beach volleyball is dominating the U.S. as one of the fastest growing sports. The tournaments are getting larger and the prize money is greater than ever before in the sports history. Tod Rogers and Phil Dalhauser dominated the olympics bringing home the Gold while in women's beach volleyball Misty May and Keri Walsh also won gold. The U.S. is starting to dominate the world in volleyball and it shows no signs of slowing down. With more and more collegiate players picking up the beach volleyball game we are seeing a rise in talent and competition is more fierce than ever in the AVP tour. With average height players a dime a dozen the emphasis is now on finding the best blocker possible. With the tallest person in the AVP standing 6'9" you need to have some serious height and put up an excellent block to get anywhere in the AVP today. There isn't a single person under 6 feet tall ranked in the top 50 for the AVP. But there is one that stands 6 feet tall which is very impressive.

Men's Beach Volleyball

Men's beach volleyball is becoming a very popular sport. Beach volleyball isn't set up the same way as other professional sports and this has it's ups and downs. One major drawback is that beach volleyball doesn't have teams that sign players for set salary's. The way men's beach volleyball is set up, once you qualify by earning a certain amount of points from winning qualifier games you are considered professional. Now the sport is only played with 2 people per team and nobody can substitute in so you have to pick your teammate wisely. You can play with a different partner every tournament if you want. There are no set teammates that you must play with for a certain amount of time. So naturally the 2 best players will want to play with each other and this is the reason for one team winning almost every tournament in the year. This is also the case in women's beach volleyball where misty may and kerri walsh have won almost every tournament for the past couple of years. This kind of makes a monopoly for the winning team because there are no set schedules with different teams, there are just different tournaments almost every weekend. Each tournament pays out quite a bit of money so the number one team gets paid very well while most of the other players struggle to make good money playing a sport professionally. In any other sport in America if you are the 50th best at your sport, you will have a really good paying contract with a team and you won't have to worry about money. The 50th best beach volleyball player will probably end up making about 10 grand playing volleyball throughout the year while the top 2 ranked players will be in the upper 6 figures.

Sand Volleyball Court

One of the biggest differences from indoor volleyball to beach volleyball is that the court is smaller for a sand volleyball court. This makes sense because there are only 2 people to defend the whole court. An indoor volleyball court measures 9 meters across by 18 meters in length. A beach volleyball court measures 8mx16m. A sand volleyball court should always be smaller than an indoor court.
The height of the net for men's beach volleyball is just shy of 8 feet high and for women it is 7'4".