South Carolina Gamecocks switching conferences ... for beach volleyball
South Carolina is joining the Big 12 ... sort of.
The SEC Gamecocks announced Wednesday that, effective immediately, their beach volleyball program has joined the Big 12 Conference as an “affiliate member.”
The Big 12 has also added the beach volleyball teams from Boise State (Mountain West) and Florida State (ACC) to accompany Arizona, Arizona and TCU (Big 12) to make up the Big 12 conference beach volleyball league, it announced.
South Carolina has been playing beach volleyball since 2014. Games are played outdoors at Wheeler Beach, a five-court complex located on campus between Carolina Softball Stadium and Carolina Tennis Center.
The team’s season generally runs from late February to late April.
USC previously competed in Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (CCSA), as did Florida State. Gamecocks beach volleyball is led by first-year coach Jose Loiola, who was hired in May after South Carolina parted ways with longtime coach Moritz Moritz, who’d been with the team since its 2013 inception.
South Carolina beach volleyball (which operates separately from indoor volleyball) has not made the NCAA Tournament since 2018 and finished 14-17 in 2025.
Beach volleyball isn’t the only USC sport with a unique conference affiliation. South Carolina’s men’s soccer team competes in the Sun Belt Conference because the SEC (USC’s home for most sports since 1992) doesn’t sponsor men’s soccer.
