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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 01How many players make up a beach volleyball team at the elite level?
2
There are no substitutions, so each player needs the full range of skills rather than one speciality.
Q 02How many touches may a team use to return the ball over the net?
3
A touch off a block counts as one of them, unlike in the indoor game.
Q 03How many points does it take to win a regular set in beach volleyball?
21
A deciding third set goes only to 15, and every set needs a two-point margin.
Q 04On which Hawaiian beach did beach volleyball most likely begin in 1915?
Waikiki
An Outrigger Canoe Club member named George 'Dad' Center is credited with putting up the first net.
Q 05In which Californian city did the modern two-player game originate?
Santa Monica
New jetties built in 1920 created a big sandy area where the first permanent nets soon went up.
Q 06Who is credited with inventing the two-man game in 1930 while waiting for players to show?
Paul 'Pablo' Johnson
Only four people had turned up for a six-a-side game at his athletic club, so he split them into pairs.
Q 07What prize was offered at the first beach tournament to award one, in Los Angeles in 1948?
A case of Pepsi
By the 1960s a professional tournament in France was offering 30,000 francs.
Q 08In what year was the first Manhattan Beach Open, the sport's 'Wimbledon', held?
1960
Winners get a bronze volleyball-shaped plaque on the pier's Volleyball Walk of Fame.
Q 09Which famous band tried playing beach volleyball in Los Angeles in the 1960s?
The Beatles
US president John F. Kennedy was also seen attending a match in that decade.
Q 10Who won the first pro tournament, the 1976 Olympia World Championship in Pacific Palisades?
Greg Lee and Jim Menges
They split $2,500 of a $5,000 purse; the event was organised by David Wilk of Volleyball magazine.
Q 11What forced promoter Event Concepts out of the sport in 1984, leading to the AVP's founding?
A players' strike
The strike came at that year's World Championship in Redondo Beach.
Q 12The AVP was originally formed as what kind of organisation?
A players' union
After a 1998 bankruptcy it was restructured into a for-profit private company.
Q 13Which footwear brand became the AVP tour's title sponsor in 2006?
Crocs
The AVP Crocs Tour ran until the tour was suspended in 2010.
On which Rio beach was the first FIVB-sanctioned international tournament played in 1987?
Q 21Which player was the first to win 100 career tournaments and finished with 139?
Sinjin Smith
He started competing in Southern California two-man tournaments at age fifteen.
Q 22Who holds the women's record for Manhattan Beach Open titles with seven?
Kathy Gregory
On the men's side Karch Kiraly has ten plaques on the pier.
Q 23Which country's pair won the women's beach volleyball gold at Sydney 2000 on Bondi Beach?
Australia
Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst had taken bronze in Atlanta four years earlier.
Ipanema
The prize purse was $22,000 and the winners were the dominant American pair of the day.
Q 15At which Olympics did beach volleyball appear as a demonstration event?
1992 Barcelona
Americans took the men's event, and Karolyn Kirby and Nancy Reno the women's.
Q 16Which Games saw beach volleyball's debut as an official Olympic sport?
1996 Atlanta
The matches were played at 'Atlanta Beach' in Jonesboro, Georgia, well away from any ocean.
Q 17How many teams per gender compete in the Olympic beach volleyball tournament?
24
Each country may enter at most two teams, with a spot reserved for the host and a wild card.
Q 18Karch Kiraly won beach gold in 1996; in which years had he won indoor Olympic gold?
1984 and 1988
He is the only player, man or woman, with Olympic medals in both indoor and beach volleyball.
Q 19How many professional beach titles did Karch Kiraly win, the most in the sport's history?
148
He won 74 of them with Kent Steffes and claimed titles with 13 different partners.
Q 20Which team did Kiraly and Steffes beat in the first Olympic men's final in 1996?
Mike Dodd and Mike Whitmarsh
It was an all-American final, with the semifinal losers playing off for bronze.
Q 24Natalie Cook was the first woman from her country to compete at how many Olympics?
5
She had given up pre-medicine studies to turn professional in 1994.
Q 25At which Games did Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings win their third straight gold?
London 2012
Their run covered Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012, and May-Treanor retired the day they won it.
Q 26How long was May-Treanor and Walsh Jennings' record winning streak in 2007-08?
112 matches
It included 19 straight tournament titles and broke their own previous record of 89.
Q 27Which TV show was Misty May-Treanor training for when she ruptured her Achilles in 2008?
Dancing with the Stars
The injury came weeks after her Beijing gold and kept her out for nearly a year.
Q 28With whom did eight-year-old Misty May play her first beach volleyball tournament?
Her father
Butch May had played on the 1968 US national indoor team; her babysitter was a young Karch Kiraly.
Q 29Where did Kerri Walsh Jennings play college volleyball, winning NCAA titles in 1996 and 1997?
Stanford
She was a first-team All-American four years running and graduated in 2001 with a degree in American studies.
Q 30Which pair beat Walsh Jennings and April Ross in the Rio 2016 semifinal?
Ágatha and Bárbara
She and Ross took the bronze, making her the only player with four Olympic beach medals.