The 2024 AVP schedule has formally been launched, and it features a little bit of the acquainted, a smattering of tweaks, and the institution of the brand new: a seaside volleyball league that would be the first of its type.
2024 AVP schedule
Three marquee occasions, referred to as Heritage Sequence, which can feel and look rather a lot just like the erstwhile Gold Sequence, spotlight the summer season, in Huntington Seaside (Might 17-19), Manhattan Seaside (August 16-18) and Chicago (August 30-September 1). That’s the acquainted.
The smattering of tweaks consist in largely identify adjustments — Gold Sequence to Heritage Sequence, Tour Sequence to Contender Occasions — and the qualification processes to enter into every Heritage Sequence. Three Contender Sequence — Denver July 6-7, Waupaca July 13-14, and Virginia Seaside August 3-4 — spherical out the summer season of six tournaments.
Just a few format adjustments, too, are in retailer. The Contenders will characteristic 24 groups, because the Tour Sequence did, however might be performed in a double-elimination format versus modified pool play, which was utilized in 2023.
Of explicit, and constructive, observe is the dearth of conflicts. Not one of the three Heritage Sequence battle with a Volleyball World occasion of substance, that means each match this summer season is predicted to have a full area. Whereas Denver and Waupaca battle with the Gstaad and Vienna Elite16s, respectively, the groups who might be in Switzerland and Austria wouldn’t be competing in a Contender occasion, so there isn’t any actual battle there.
Because the Tour Sequence occasions served as qualifiers into the Gold and Professional Sequence the final two seasons, so the Contenders will function qualifiers for the Heritage in 2024. Huntington is the one Heritage with out an accompanying Contender occasion, so the 16-team double-elimination match at one of many sport’s hottest stops can have an on-site qualifier by which 4 groups could make the principle draw.
After that, Denver, with the acquainted 24-team most important draw recognized to Tour Sequence gamers, will function a qualifier for Manhattan Seaside, with the highest 4 groups advancing into the 32-team most important draw. Waupaca, the annual competition of volleyball in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, can even function a qualifier for Manhattan, with its high 4 groups advancing into the principle draw. The highest 4 finishers in Virginia Seaside will declare a spot into the season-ending Heritage Sequence in Chicago, which can stay a 16-team draw.
Like Huntington, Manhattan can have an on-site qualifier, with eight further groups advancing to the principle draw, to accompany the 4 bids earned from Denver and Waupaca.
Introducing the AVP League
However it’s in September, after the Chicago Heritage Sequence, that probably the most sizable change will happen with the onset of the AVP League.
Eight males’s groups and eight ladies’s groups will lengthen their season to compete within the inaugural AVP League, competing for eight completely different cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, Dallas, Miami, Palm Seaside, New York, and Brooklyn. Every metropolis will characteristic one ladies’s pair and one males’s pair and, it’s related to notice, the athletes won’t should relocate to these cities to coach. The matches might be held on eight consecutive weekends, and every group will play 4 of the weekends, with 4 off weeks, every weekend consisting of a Saturday match and a Sunday match.
After the eight weeks of the League, the highest 4 groups will advance to the League Championship on November 9-10, at a location nonetheless to be decided.
There are three potential routes for groups to qualify for the League: Win a Heritage Sequence, accrue sufficient factors as a group utilizing two of their high three finishes from Heritage Sequence, or wild card, which the AVP League can use on two groups per gender.
The small print for the League — prize cash, how the draft will work, who coaches every franchise, to call a number of — will, based on the AVP, be launched within the coming weeks.