Players in action at the 2015 Rehoboth Beach Open. (Photo by Chad Hrdina)

The D.C. Pride Volleyball League will host the Rehoboth Beach Open on Saturday, June 18 on Poodle Beach. The tournament is in its second year and organizers are hoping to draw about 30 teams.

The event will feature three competitive divisions of four-person teams starting with pool play and advancing to single elimination playoffs. A portion of the proceeds will go to CAMP Rehoboth.

The D.C. Pride Volleyball League was formed in January, 2015 and has already wrapped three seasons of indoor league play, last year’s Rehoboth Beach Open and the 2015 President’s Pride Cup indoor tournament. Commissioner Michael Zgoda points to two other teams, Gotham Volleyball in New York and Asbury Park Volleyball for their members’ guidance in setting up the structure of D.C. Pride Volleyball.

“Gotham Volleyball really helped us in getting the league started,” Zgoda says. “It was definitely a lessons-learned situation.”

When D.C. Pride Volleyball began planning the launch of the beach volleyball tournament last year, organizers turned to their friends in New Jersey.

“Asbury Park Volleyball rented us all the equipment we needed,” Zgoda says. “They also helped with the behind-the-scenes logistics such as securing the permit to play on Poodle Beach.”

The Rehoboth Beach Open is one of three LGBT-sponsored beach volleyball tournaments in the region’s LGBT destination cities with Gotham’s Fire Island and Asbury Park being the others. The organizers of the three tournaments are hoping an East Coast circuit will develop.

“We used to run a beach volleyball tournament in Atlantic City,” says Gus Cam, Asbury Park Volleyball commissioner. “We ended up shutting it down when their gay bars started closing.”

Ten years ago, the Asbury Park Volleyball Annual Beach Open started with matches contested behind a church. It quickly outgrew that space and the tournament has since been held on the beach.

The event this year will take place in August and draws about 200 players and offers two-person, four-person and six-person matches. Most of the players are LGBT.

The North American Gay Volleyball Association does not sanction outdoor beach volleyball so the effort to bring other cities into the circuit such as Fort Lauderdale, lies in the hands of the beach tournament organizers.

“Last year we helped D.C. Pride Volleyball with shared rules of conduct and best practices for the Rehoboth tournament,” Cam says. “We gave them the structure to replicate the set-up we have in place for our tournament.”

If more cities come on board, the structure will be passed on to those who need it and the tournaments will advertise for each other.

“It’s so interesting to go and compete in another LGBT destination city,” Zgoda says. “Asbury Park is such a cute little town on the Jersey Shore.”