GREENEVILLE – The leader of Tusculum University’s Sport Management Department and one of the program’s professors have co-authored an informative and detailed article for a national publication about beach volleyball’s growth.
Dr. Sabrina Reed
Dr. Sabrina Reed, the department chair, and Tim Wilson, associate professor of sport management, teamed with Dr. Chris Croft, an assistant professor of sport management at the University of Southern Mississippi to write the article for the Journal of Managerial Issues. The group wrote “Promoting Intercollegiate Beach Volleyball: The Rise of the NCAA’s Fasting Growing Sport” for the publication’s fall 2021 edition.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to examine this subject in depth and demonstrate the expertise of our sport management faculty and the quality of our academic program,” said Dr. Reed, who is also an associate professor of sport management at Tusculum. “Through this project, we are further demonstrating the value Tusculum places on research in helping people more fully understand subjects that interest them.”
In the article, the three professors say attention beach volleyball has received at the Olympics has helped make intercollegiate volleyball a marketable new sport for women.
“The expanded television time devoted to beach volleyball at the Olympics has played a part in adding to the popularity of beach volleyball at the collegiate level,” the authors wrote. “The marketability and exposure of beach volleyball has led the National Collegiate Athletic Association to add it as the 90th championship sport and ESPN to sign a deal to showcase the championships live from Gulf Shores, Alabama.”
Tim Wilson
The authors also say beach volleyball’s rise has opened the door for other championship sports for female student-athletes, such as acrobatics, tumbling and rugby.
Beach volleyball is one of Tusculum’s 12 women’s teams. The team first played in 2019 and captured the South Atlantic Conference Beach Challenge championship in spring 2021. The university is putting the finishing touches on four new beach volleyball courts next to Red Edmonds Field on the Tusculum campus.
“With beach volleyball contributing to the strength of Tusculum’s athletic program, Dr. Reed and I felt this would be an appropriate time to shed additional light on the growth of this sport from multiple perspectives,” Wilson said. “We thank Dr. Croft for sharing his extensive knowledge to help us paint a detailed portrait of this exciting sport, and we appreciate the Journal of Managerial Issues for providing the forum to share it.”
The Journal of Managerial Issues is a quarterly publication of Pittsburg State University and serves as a bridge between the academic and business communities.