Collegiate Nationals

Last updated December 17, 2023

The Collegiate Nationals was a multisport event for college students across the United States. The events aired annually on CBS College Sports Network from 2006 through 2012. In 2009 the name was changed to "The Alt Games."

The Nationals included competitions in sports not sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Events were open to accredited students at both four-year and two-year schools. For at least nine of the sports, the contests were the established national championship competitions that had previously existed and were conducted by their respective collegiate sport governing bodies.

The telecasts were produced by Echo Entertainment and marketed by Highline Sports on behalf of CBS College Sports.

Sports offered

In addition, there were film and music competitions.

Sport	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	Total appearances
Adventure racing	N	Y	N	N	N	N	N	1
Beach volleyball	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	7
Boxing	Y	Y	Y	N	N	N	N	3
Competitive Eating	N	N	Y	Y	N	N	N	2
Flowboarding	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	5
Freeskiing	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	5
Paintball	Y	N	N	N	N	N	N	1
Skateboarding	N	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	2
Skydiving	N	N	N	N	Y	N	N	1
Snowboarding	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	6
Surfing	N	N	N	N	N	Y	Y	2
Triathlon	Y	N	N	N	N	N	N	1
Ultimate	N	N	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	4
Wakeboarding	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	7
Weightlifting	N	Y	Y	N	N	N	N	2
Whitewater kayaking	Y	Y	N	N	Y	N	N	3
Total each year	7	9	9	6	8	8	5	52

↑ The skydiving segment appeared on CBS' "Alt Games" telecast on April 30, 2010. The segment was recorded in December 2009 at the USA Parachute Association collegiate championship.

History

The Nationals were launched in 2006. The site of the first event was the Reno-Lake Tahoe area in Nevada. For its second year (2007), the Nationals expanded to include events at Mission Bay in San Diego, California.

There were more changes in 2008, as the snowboarding event was moved to the Keystone ski resort near Boulder, Colorado. The competitive eating and ultimate competitions were also added that year. Also, the Nationals debuted on terrestrial television ^{[ citation needed ]} when CBS Sports aired the first of eight one-hour episodes on May 25.

Beach volleyball

In 2006, the AVP sanctioned a combine that selected 8 players from 8 colleges and paired them into teams (title was won by Bibiana Candelas (USC)/Paula Gentil (Minnesota)). In 2007 Nebraska (Jordan Larson/Sarah Pavan) won an invitational competition of 8 colleges, which featured only two players per school, as opposed to entire teams. 2008 saw Texas win an invitational, sponsored by AVCA and AVP, involving 6 schools with four pairs teams each.^[3] In 2009, USC prevailed over an invited field of 8 colleges with four pairs teams each. In 2010, the competition reverted to one pairs team per school, with 12 colleges invited; it was won by Loyola Marymount (Emily Day/Heather Hughes). The two-player team format continued in 2011, except that players were paired with different partners from other schools for every match, until the semi-final winners were determined. That year there was also a men's competition in the same format. In 2012, the event was conducted by the American Volleyball Coaches Association and featured Long Beach State vs. Pepperdine in the final.

Hosts

The 2008 event hosts were Jonny Moseley, Olympic champion in moguls skiing, and Jenn Brown. Carter Blackburn was the boxing announcer, and Chris McGee and Holly McPeak called the beach volleyball matches.

Additional information

Of the events on the Collegiate Nationals/Alt Games program, only two had any ties to actual NCAA sports at the time. Many of the beach volleyball players also played in the indoor version of the game; beach volleyball later became an NCAA sport that held its first official championship in 2016. Boxing was an NCAA-sanctioned sport until 1961, when the death of a boxer who attended Wisconsin caused the organization to drop the sport.^[4]

Related Research Articles

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and one in Canada. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Beach volleyball is a team sport played by two teams of two or more players on a sand court divided by a net. Similar to indoor volleyball, the objective of the game is to send the ball over the net and to ground it on the opponent's side of the court. Each team also works in unison to prevent the opposing team from grounding the ball on their side of the court.

Misty Elizabeth May-Treanor is a retired American professional beach volleyball player. She is a three-time Olympic gold medalist, and as of August 2012, was the most successful female beach volleyball player having won 112 tournaments in domestic and international competition.

Charles Frederick "Karch" Kiraly is an American volleyball player, coach, and broadcast announcer. He was a central part of the U.S National Team that won gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games. He went on to win the gold medal again at the 1996 Olympic Games, the first Olympic competition to feature beach volleyball. He is the only player to have won Olympic medals of any color in both the indoor and beach volleyball categories. He played college volleyball for the UCLA Bruins, where his teams won three national championships under head coach Al Scates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sports in the United States</span> Overview of sports traditions and activities in the United States of America

Sports in the United States are an important part of the nation's culture. Historically, the national sport has been baseball. However, in more recent decades, American football has been the most popular sport in terms of broadcast viewership audience. Basketball has grown into the mainstream American sports scene since the 1980s, with ice hockey and soccer doing the same around the turn of the 21st century. These sports comprise the "Big Five". In the first half of the 20th century, boxing and collegiate football were among the most popular sports after baseball. Golf, tennis, and collegiate basketball are other spectator sports with longstanding popularity. Most recently, Mixed martial arts has been breaking records in attendance and broadcast viewership for all combat sports.

The Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) is the biggest and longest-running professional beach volleyball tour in the United States. Founded in 1983, the AVP is headquartered in Newport Beach, California. The AVP operates as a 3-tiered development system with AVPFirst, a youth program; AVPNext, a developmental circuit; and the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour itself.

Volleyball in the United States is popular with both male and female participants of all ages. Almost all high schools and colleges in the United States have female volleyball teams, and most regions of the country have developmental programs for girls of all ages as well. While many areas of the country are forming male teams and development programs, there are still fewer opportunities for young male athletes to play volleyball in the United States than for young female athletes. Men's volleyball is a fast-growing sport among high schools, with 36 states having male volleyball programs. Most men's seasons are in the spring while women's seasons take place primarily in the fall; however, there are a few men's teams such as in Wisconsin, Virginia, and New York who play in the fall as well.

Dain Blanton is an American former beach volleyball player who won the gold medal in beach volleyball in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia with partner Eric Fonoimoana. He returned to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece with partner Jeff Nygaard, becoming the first two-time U.S. male beach volleyball Olympian.

ChristianMarlowe is an American professional sportscaster who resides in Denver, Colorado. He currently is the play-by-play announcer for the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association in the fall, winter and spring, and in the summer he is a play-by-play announcer for the Association of Volleyball Professionals. He is a former collegiate basketball and volleyball player and played on the US National Men's Volleyball Team. He played beach volleyball extensively and won numerous tournaments on the Open beach circuit. He also was a captain of the US Men's volleyball team that won the gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games.

Heather Cox is an American sportscaster who is a sports reporter for NBC. As Heather Schoeny, she played college volleyball at University of the Pacific.

The Heisman High School Scholarship, in the past known as Wendy's High School Heisman Memorial Trophy Award, named after former college football player and coach John Heisman, is a prestigious award in American high-school athletics. The current spokesman is Archie Griffin, the only two-time Heisman Trophy recipient and current President/CEO of the Ohio State University Alumni Association.

The American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) is an organization of over 9,000 members, incorporated as a private non-profit educational corporation in 1981, as the Collegiate Volleyball Coaches Association. It is currently headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky.

April Elizabeth Ross is an American beach volleyball player and three-time Olympic medalist. She won a silver medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics with Jennifer Kessy, a bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics with Kerri Walsh Jennings, and a gold medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics with Alix Klineman. Ross and Kessy were also the 2009 Beach Volleyball World Champions.

College club sports in the United States are any sports offered at a university or college in the United States that compete competitively with other universities, or colleges, but are not regulated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) or National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), and do not have varsity status. Collegiate club sports can exist at schools that do have teams that are part of the NCAA or NAIA. Many times, club sports are student-run and receive little financial aid from the school. An estimated 2 million student athletes compete in club sports.

Ryan Daniel Doherty is an American professional beach volleyball player.

Sarah Lindsey Pavan is a Canadian beach volleyball and former indoor volleyball player. She was part of the Canada women's national volleyball team at the 2010 FIVB Volleyball Women's World Championship in Japan. With Melissa Humana-Paredes she won the women's gold medal at the 2019 Beach Volleyball World Championships.

Sara Elizabeth Hughes is an American beach volleyball player. With teammate Kelly Cheng, she achieved a career-high world ranking of No. 2 in August 2023. Hughes has won six tournaments on the AVP Pro Tour and seven gold medals, one silver medal, and three bronze medals on the FIVB World Tour/Pro Beach Tour.

Taylor Crabb is an American beach volleyball player who plays as a left-side defender with his partner Taylor Sander. He has won eleven tournaments on the AVP Pro Tour, as well as one gold medal on the FIVB World Tour.

Deca Sports, is a series of sports video games developed and published by Hudson Soft, a former subsidiary of Konami.

References

↑ See also: National Collegiate Boxing Association#National Team Champions.
1 2 See also: Intercollegiate sports team champions#Snowboard and Ski.
↑ "Volleyball Field Set for Collegiate Nationals". 9 April 2008. Archived from the original on 2014-02-22. Retrieved 2014-02-09.
↑ The Great American Sports Book, by George Gipe. (1977)

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[3] The skydiving segment appeared on CBS' "Alt Games" telecast on April 30, 2010. The segment was recorded in December 2009 at the USA Parachute Association collegiate championship.

[1] See also: National Collegiate Boxing Association#National Team Champions.

[SnowboardAndSki-2] 1 2 See also: Intercollegiate sports team champions#Snowboard and Ski.

[4] "Volleyball Field Set for Collegiate Nationals". 9 April 2008. Archived from the original on 2014-02-22. Retrieved 2014-02-09.

[5] The Great American Sports Book, by George Gipe. (1977)

[1]

[2]

[lower-alpha 1]

[3]

[4]