Beach Volleyball Trivia
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50 free Beach Volleyball trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Beach volleyball is the two-a-side sand game that grew out of Hawaiian and Californian beach clubs and became one of the hottest tickets at every Summer Olympics. This quiz covers the sport from its first recorded game at Waikiki to the Eiffel Tower Stadium in Paris. The easy questions ask how many players are on a team, how many touches you get, how many points win a set and where the sport made its Olympic debut. From there it moves into the rules that separate beach from indoor volleyball: the smaller court, the lower ball pressure, the ban on open-hand tips, the clean-hands set, and why teams switch ends every seven points. The harder end is for fans of the tours and the legends: Paul 'Pablo' Johnson's first doubles game in 1930, the Pepsi-case prize of 1948, the players' strike that created the AVP, Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos, Karch Kiraly's 148 titles, the 112-match streak of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings, Emanuel Rego's full set of Olympic medals, Anders Mol and Christian Sørum, Sweden's Paris gold and Brazil's return to the top of the women's podium after 28 years. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the sport, its Olympic tournaments and its players, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our volleyball, Summer Olympics and Brazil quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which staple of the indoor game is banned outright in beach volleyball?
Substitutions
Substitutions are banned: the same two players stay on court for every point and must take turns to serve, so neither can hide a weakness behind a specialist.
Q 02What may play the ball in a beach volleyball rally?
Any body part
Any body part may play the ball, so a desperate kick is legal; the one exception is the serve, which must be struck with a hand or arm.
Q 03At 20-20, how does a beach volleyball set end?
A two-point lead
A two-point lead is required and there is no ceiling, so a tight set simply runs on past 21 until one pair gets two clear; a deciding third set is played to 15 on the same terms.
Q 04On which Hawaiian beach did beach volleyball most likely begin in 1915?
Waikiki
Waikiki's Outrigger Canoe Club says it began on a day when the surf was flat: bored members had nothing to do, so George 'Dad' Center bought a net and a couple of balls and set them up on the beach.
Q 05In which Californian city did the modern two-player version of beach volleyball originate?
Santa Monica
Santa Monica saw the first recorded doubles game in 1930, when too few players turned up for six-a-side; the four who did began on a quarter of the court, doubting that two could cover it all.
Q 06What drove beach volleyball's first big boom in America during the 1930s?
The Great Depression
The Great Depression sent Americans to the beach for cheap entertainment, and the game suited hard times: all it took was a net, a ball and a swimsuit.
Q 07What prize went to the best teams at the first beach volleyball tournament to offer one, in 1948?
A case of Pepsi
A case of Pepsi was the reward, a year after the first official two-man tournament had offered no cash at all; by the mid-1970s a cigarette brand was putting up $1,500 for a tournament in San Diego.
Q 08Which California city stages the Open called the 'Wimbledon of beach volleyball'?
Manhattan Beach
Manhattan Beach first held its Open in 1960, and each winning pair is honoured with a bronze, volleyball-shaped plaque on the town's pier.
Q 09Which British band, on a 1960s tour, were photographed trying beach volleyball in California?
The Beatles
The Beatles passed a ball around at Sorrento Beach when the game was as much a part of California life as surfing; President Kennedy watched a tournament at the same beach that decade.
Q 10Which tequila brand became pro beach volleyball's first major sponsor in the late 1970s?
Jose Cuervo
Jose Cuervo signed on around the time the World Championship moved to Redondo Beach, and sponsorship grew fast: by 1980 the sport had its first sponsored tour, seven events worth $52,000.
Q 11What forced promoter Event Concepts out of pro beach volleyball at the end of 1984?
A players' strike
A players' strike at the World Championship in Redondo Beach did it; the AVP, formed a year earlier to protect the players' interests, then started running the tour itself.
Q 12Which 1980s film features a famous beach volleyball scene set to Kenny Loggins's 'Playing with the Boys'?
Top Gun
Top Gun stops for a shirtless game of doubles on the beach, and Loggins has said he chose to write for that scene because he reckoned no other songwriter would compete for it.
Q 13Which footwear brand became title sponsor of the AVP pro beach volleyball tour in 2006?
Crocs
Q 21Which beach volleyball player was the first to win 100 career tournaments, finishing with 139?
Sinjin Smith
Sinjin Smith reached the mark first and was famous enough by 1988 for Electronic Arts to build a video game, Kings of the Beach, around him and his partner Randy Stoklos.
Q 22What did California's beach volleyball tournaments add to the official programme in the 1950s 'Beachmania' era?
Beauty contests
Beauty contests joined the bill, and a 1957 tournament featured an actress as its 'Queen of the Beach'; the game was turning into a show as much as a sport.
Q 23Which country's pair won the women's beach volleyball gold at the Sydney 2000 Olympics?
Australia
Crocs put its name on a sport played barefoot from 2006, then bought its way out of the contract after the 2009 season, a year before the tour itself shut down.
Q 14On which Rio beach was the first FIVB-sanctioned international beach volleyball tournament played in 1987?
Ipanema
Ipanema hosted it with $22,000 in prize money, a year after an exhibition in Rio had drawn 5,000 spectators; within two years the FIVB had launched a World Series circuit.
Q 15Why were women allowed shorts and sleeved tops in Olympic beach volleyball from 2012?
Cultural beliefs
Cultural beliefs, the federation said, as qualifying drew in countries with religious and cultural dress requirements; until then the choice was a bikini or a one-piece, with a body suit for cold weather.
Q 16Which city's Olympics gave beach volleyball its debut as a full medal sport?
Atlanta
Atlanta staged it in 1996 far from any coast, on a man-made beach at a recreation park outside the city, and all six days of play sold out.
Q 17What usually happens when rain hits beach volleyball matches?
Play carries on
Play carries on in the rain, which is why the rules demand a ball that does not soak up water; the 2008 women's Olympic final in Beijing was played out in a downpour.
Q 18Which American is the only player to have won Olympic gold in both indoor and beach volleyball?
Karch Kiraly
Karch Kiraly won indoor gold in 1984 and 1988 and beach gold in 1996, then won again as a coach, steering the US women's indoor team to their first Olympic title in Tokyo.
Q 19Which kind of French camp reportedly made beach volleyball its main sport in 1927?
Nudist
A nudist camp at Franconville, near Paris, is said to have taken it up as the house sport; naturists were early adopters, and volleyball went on to become a staple of nudist clubs.
Q 20Which Sydney beach hosted beach volleyball at the 2000 Olympics?
Bondi
Bondi got a temporary 10,000-seat stadium that some residents protested against; once play began it filled with face-painted, wig-wearing fans and became one of the hits of the Games.
Australia's Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst fell behind early in both sets of the final and fought back each time to beat Brazil's reigning world champions in front of a roaring home crowd.
Q 24Where must beach volleyball players stand to receive serve?
Anywhere they like
Anywhere they like on their own side: the beach game has no set positions, so the positional faults that catch out indoor teams cannot happen.
Q 25What did Kerri Walsh Jennings reveal weeks after her third Olympic beach volleyball gold in 2012?
Her pregnancy
Her pregnancy: she told NBC's Today show she had been five weeks along while diving around the court in London, and had guessed as much because she felt unusually moody.
Q 26What was unusual about May-Treanor and Walsh Jennings's 2004 and 2008 Olympic beach volleyball titles?
No sets lost
No sets lost in 14 matches across Athens and Beijing; the first pair to take one off them at an Olympics were Austria's Schwaiger sisters, in the group stage in London.
Q 27Which TV show was Misty May-Treanor training for when she ruptured her Achilles in 2008?
Dancing with the Stars
Dancing with the Stars cost her nearly a year of volleyball: she tore the tendon rehearsing with partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy and had to pull out of the show for surgery.
Q 28Which member of Misty May-Treanor's family played volleyball at the 1968 Olympics and starred in beach mixed doubles?
Her father
Her father, Butch May, was known as the king of mixed doubles on the beach, and the partner he won with, Barbara Grubb, became his wife and Misty's mother.
Q 29Where did Kerri Walsh Jennings play college volleyball, winning NCAA titles in 1996 and 1997?
Stanford
Stanford made her a four-time first-team All-American, and she went to the Sydney 2000 Olympics as an indoor player, finishing fourth, before switching to the beach game a year later.
Q 30What did Kerri Walsh Jennings do for the first time in Olympic beach volleyball at Rio 2016?
Lose a match
Lose a match: she had won all 26 of her Olympic matches on the beach, across four Games, before Brazil's Ágatha and Bárbara beat her and April Ross; the Americans still recovered to take bronze.