The Long Beach State men\u2019s volleyball program lives by the slogan \u201cexpect greatness.\u201d So when they took the court against UCLA in the NCAA Men\u2019s Volleyball National Championship, they expected nothing less.<\/p>\n
Featuring two of the top teams in the nation in a rematch of last year\u2019s national championship, the match was expected to be intense and tightly contested. But the Beach put on a performance nothing short of greatness, avenging their championship loss with a commanding sweep over the Bruins at the Covelli Center in Columbus, Ohio. The Beach won 25-17, 25-23, 25-21.<\/p>\n
It marks a fourth national championship in program history and the first since the Beach went back-to-back in 2018-2019. Head coach Alan Knipe has been a part of each national championship with the program, one as a player in 1991 and now his third as a coach here in 2025. Knipe later announced his retirement in 2025, finishing his legendary career on top.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s incredible. The feeling absolutely never gets old,\u201d Knipe said. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of the guys and everything they did all season long. With what we went through with our lineups and our roster, and pretty much a brand new team at the beginning of the year, losing three starters along the way, and changing guys\u2019 positions. [These guys] handled it so well and I\u2019m so proud of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The match started and ended in the same way, and it\u2019s the same way it\u2019s been all season: Moni Nikolov. The National Player of the Year opened the match with his first of four aces and swung on an overpass for a kill at match point to seal the win. He finished the match with six kills on .300 hitting and had a match-high 27 assists.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a relief. I wanted this win more than anything else,\u201d Nikolov said. \u201cI\u2019m so glad that I got to share these emotions with our coaches in the whole team. It was the first time I actually started crying tears of joy so it truly meant so much to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fourth NCAA Men\u2019s Volleyball National Championship comes in the Beach\u2019s 11th championship appearance in program history, in what was a dominant season through and through. The Beach was ranked No. 1 in the nation for the last 14 weeks. It\u2019s their third men\u2019s volleyball championship in the last seven years, but it\u2019s the first for Bobby Smitheran as athletic director.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so happy for the young men in our program because they\u2019ve represented Long Beach and Long Beach State,\u201d said Smitheran. \u201cThey\u2019ve done it with heart and with class I\u2019m just so proud of the way they\u2019ve competed. To be the number one ranked team for as long as they have, that\u2019s difficult to give that kind of bullseye on your back and to finish it off the way they did I\u2019m just so happy for them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Long Beach State men\u2019s volleyball program lives by the slogan \u201cexpect greatness.\u201d So when they took the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-115455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}