Grow the game.
We say that a lot, don’t we? Grow the game. We who love volleyball want nothing more than to see it join the upper echelon of the North American sport pantheon, with the likes of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey.
It’s a really nice idea. Wouldn’t it be great if young girls (and yes, young boys, too) had more sporting icons to look up to? Sports aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’d be obtuse to suggest they aren’t a huge part of the culture. For many of us, perhaps any of you who will read this, we grew up with posters on our walls of men (yes, probably just men) who captured our imaginations, our very hearts and minds, for weeks and months at a time. It was appointment television to watch them play whenever possible. There were trips to stadiums, no less than yearly, to experience the magic in person.
For me, it was baseball first. My team? The Seattle Mariners. When I was a kid, they issued these poster-sized season schedules, in addition to the pocket schedules that are (surprisingly) still commonplace. I got one for the 1995 season. I had just turned nine a few months prior, and wasn’t yet aware of why exactly the season started so late in April (indeed, I recall asking my father, himself a sports fan, when the season would have ended if not for the strike, rather than when it would have begun). It was all a perfect storm for me as the ’95 Mariners had one of the most incredible seasons in the history of the sport (making the playoffs after trailing in the standings by more than 10 games in late August, finishing two wins shy of making the World Series), and I became a fan for life. Listening on the radio, the rare opportunity (as it was back then) to see a game here and there on TV, it was one of my most treasured formative experiences.
It’s a human experience, one that resonates all over the world. No city, country, or region owns sport. The heroes I grew up idolising surely have their analogues elsewhere. Different cultures will produce different icons, and aside from the blindingly obvious (“why doesn’t anyone play beach volleyball in Iceland?”) I’ll safely leave it to someone smarter than me to determine why. I got schedule-posters again in ’96 and ’97, and then I’m fairly sure they stopped making them. I had those first three for years after those seasons ended. I wish I still did.
Experiences like that are not limited to youth. They may be harder to come by as people age, get more jaded, and stop believing in magic so much. But I’ve had them myself again and again as the years went on. These days, my second-favourite sport to follow is pro bicycling, as I’ve mentioned here a time or two. In 2009, I happened to watch the Tour of Italy race for the first time. In amongst a few teams I knew from having watched the Tour de France before was the Cervélo TestTeam, a squad that had just formed that year. They won four stages in the race, and I was thrilled and enchanted each time. I can still remember Carlos Sastre’s grimace of effort as he flew up Mount Petrano, his lucky necklace flapping with the wind resistance. I was on my feet and cheering. And I continued to follow and support the team as that year and the next went on. Despite pro bicycling teams folding being a disturbingly common phenomenon, I don’t mind telling you that I actually shed a tear or two when the TestTeam did after 2010. That’s how much they meant to me.
And if you’ve been reading, you know it’s happened for me in volleyball, too. I was taken in by the Wichita State Shockers’ postseason run in last women’s season, and likewise captivated the Hawaii Warriors team this past men’s season. It’s something that almost can’t be described in words, though as you may recall I did try. I think it’s something that happens for everyone. I hope it’s something that happens for everyone, because, gosh, it’s one of the best feelings there is.
It’ll never be quite the same, though, with volleyball. The reason? The transience of college sport. Those Wichita State and Hawaii teams that so took my breath away? Even now, neither exist exactly as they did at those times. After the next season on each side, it will be even more so. And that’s actually probably a good thing. I do feel slightly silly being such a sappy fan of persons of several years younger than me (although within the next decade, it’ll be that way with the pro sports too). Though alumni are often fond of saying they’re a “<<insert team nickname here>> for life,” the truth is you see them for four ultimately very short years, and then they’re gone. At a maximum. Most players won’t be in the limelight for that long before they’re forced to depart.
But why can we not have these amazing moments in volleyball?
As you may or may not know, domestic pro volleyball in the United States has been tried. The United States Pro Volleyball League, or USPV (don’t know where the L went) came into existence in 2002. It was, from all appearances, a pretty dismal failure. After one season with all of four teams playing, there was an attempt for a second season with eight. Even though the league did not expect to make money in its first few seasons, the financial situation was so dire that no 2003 season took place at all. Organisers tried to return in 2004, but all we can really say for sure is that they didn’t.
Why did the league fail? Well, I think a big part of the reason is that in the United States, volleyball is considered a game for girls. It’s something I’ve reflected on before, in one of TNS’ all-time most-viewed posts (if not the most-viewed). Quick aside — while I tar the whole continent with the same brush in the title and open, I do have to give some credit to Canada here. Of the 54 members of Canadian Interuniversity Sport, 37 of them sponsor women’s volleyball, and of those 37, 28 also sponsor men’s. That’s the very same number of NCAA Division I/II schools that sponsor it in the States, with only about one-sixth as many member institutions overall. It’s nice to see, and TNS will make an effort in coming seasons to provide some measure of coverage for CIS volleyball.
But as said, volleyball is considered a game for girls in the United States. That put the USPV on par with leagues such as the WNBA, which receives extensive subsidies from its ‘brother’ league and even still operates at a loss. And that’s at a very-best case scenario. Another women’s league, the Women’s United Soccer Association, with the catchy acronym WUSA, folded at about the same time as the USPV despite being two years older. Soccer wasn’t yet as popular in the USA as it is even now, just a decade later, but at the time that league’s failure (and the myriad struggles of the WNBA) were attributed to a lack of cultural interest and a lack of history of women and girls buying tickets to pro sporting events (maybe my experience isn’t so common as I first thought). If volleyball were also a niche sport propped up by fledgling female fans, the future can’t have been much more promising.
Now, with Major League Soccer taking its place as a ‘major’ league along with the NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLB, women’s soccer is trying again, with the eight-team National Women’s Soccer League. The failure of the WUSA never meant that the idea was dead forever, and I hope to see this league succeed.
Around the world, soccer is far and away the most popular sport, at any level you can think of — professional, age group, pickup, men’s, women’s, collegiate, all of the above. Why is that? The most common idea I’ve seen is that it boils down to the simplicity of the equipment — all you need are a ball and some friends, and you’re good to go. Contrast that with hockey and baseball, both of which require a lot of specialised (and expensive) equipment. Even basketball, if you mean to play anything remotely resembling the actual game, needs to be played with specific goal-areas (though admittedly it’s easier than baseball or hockey). But in soccer (or football if you’d rather), all you need is a ball, a field, and agreement on what the goal is.
Is any of that impossible with volleyball?
Sure, a volleyball net isn’t something you’re going to find on playgrounds like a basketball hoop, but those billions of children the world over who grow up playing soccer don’t all do it on a regulation pitch. If you’ve got a ball (and not necessarily even a volleyball), some grass or some sand, and some friends to draw boundaries and pass the ball with, how’s the game of bump sets and diving digs any harder to stage than the game of headers and corner kicks? At least this way you get to use your hands, kids!
Have there been any significant grassroots initiatives to introduce volleyball to young children? I don’t think I ever even heard of the game until I was 13 or 14. I played a bastardised version of it in health class called Newcomb, which, yeah it was fun, but it wasn’t volleyball. It was volleyball for the dodgeball crowd, and when’s the last time you ever heard of pro dodgeball? (No, that stupid movie doesn’t count) Is it volleyball’s own fault? Does the game itself bear some irrevocable flaw or flaws impeding popularity?
The people in charge of the sport seem to think so. That’s why in 1999, the change was made from sideout scoring to rally scoring, with USA Volleyball’s rules mirroring those used at the world level, as they do now. The choice was controversial at the time and even now some people still stand opposed. Matches under the old system were interminably (and, just as important, unpredictably) long. Three of the four coaches in the following year’s NCAA women’s final four spoke up in firm opposition to rally scoring, believing no change was really necessary. But in 2001, women’s volleyball adopted rally scoring and it’s become an inextricable part of the game. They will never change back.
The larger fact, though, is that volleyball matches are still of unpredictable lengths. Every baseball game will last 9 innings. Every basketball game lasts 4 quarters, likewise football. Every hockey game has 3 periods. Overtime exists in all of these sports, and in some cases the overtime can get to nutty extremes, but those are the exceptions and not the rule. A volleyball match might last 3 sets, or it might last 5. Each set could be 25-5, or it could be 52-50. Substitute more realistic extremes if you must, but it’s definitely different from the four dominant sports in this regard. None of them allow for the game to be of varying lengths as a fundamental aspect of the game itself.
That makes the sport something less than TV-friendly, which, reflecting back to the open, is part of what makes sport so big a part of our lives and formative years. Everybody wants to be on TV. It’s really the reason why the FIVB went to rally scoring, why the NCAA reduced from 30-point sets to 25’s, why the 2008 ball-handling directive happened, why the FIVB may now be experimenting with 21 point sets — it’s all in the name of making the game easier to understand at a glance. In the name of making the game more accessible for, god-forbid, the casual fan.
I’ve never been one to be dogmatically opposed to change. I’m not a fan of the 21-point sets idea, but that’s really only because I like more volleyball, not less. I didn’t care for the switch from 30 to 25, either, and I wouldn’t at all mind going back to 30 (not that that’ll ever happen). I don’t really understand why some fans are so up in arms about things like rally-scoring and double-hit calls being loosened up. If it makes someone stroll into the gymnasium and find the game easier to follow….why would anyone be opposed to that? Tradition? Balderdash. Take action, or inaction, because it’s the right thing to do, not because change is scary.
Here now is where I have to throw Canada out with the bathwater again. Canadian sport fans are just as invested, emotionally and literally, in the four dominant sport leagues in North America as their neighbours to the south. Three of the four major leagues have Canadian franchises, and while gridiron football is often thought worldwide to be America’s folly, there are NFL games staged in Canada every year. Likewise, Canadian football isn’t exactly as distant from American as American is from, say, Gaelic football. In any case, is it really so controversial to suggest that Canadian popular culture has immense ties to American? With that said, pro volleyball in Canada would be every bit the non-starter that it is in the States. Every member of the Canadian men’s national team who plays professionally does so overseas.
(Clearly, because there’s no domestic league)
I think of just about every World League or World Grand Prix piece I’ve written so far, and almost all of them include mention of a robust professional league in the country, even Iran. The sporting pantheons are different, with all of them having soccer at the top of the mountain rather than rolling a rock up it like Sisyphus, but what other difference is there? Really. Watch just a few moments of a clip like this one
and try to picture the same thing with North American athletes and fans. It seems impossible, but, is there any real reason for that, other than that it is? What, the ads on the jerseys? Pssh. We already have sportsmen who are nothing but walking billboards. They’re called race car drivers (and race cars). No, for me, the most unlikely feature is that it’s a crowd of people (in albeit a small arena) who have paid to watch women’s sport. We’re still pretty patriarchal when it comes to our sports, and trying to showcase a bunch of men playing a “girl’s game” wouldn’t make it any easier.
The USPV was a brave step, but to bite the head (or would it be the tail?) off this self-fulfilling prophecy is going to require that bitter pill — change — be swallowed. Because the game as it is now, for good reasons or bad, is just never going to be appointment television. It doesn’t all boil down to that — nothing mentioned in this article is the sole reason why volleyball is a “’til you’re 22, then once every four years” sport in North America. But it probably is the biggest piece to the puzzle. Even now, with the women’s volleyball coverage ESPN does provide, it’s either on their not-widely-available ESPNU channel, or their not-widely-known (but absolutely awesome) WatchESPN online app. Only later matches in the NCAA tournament make ESPN itself. So there’s definitely growth to be had there, too.
We’ve got work to do, work that doesn’t end with a twitter hashtag. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work if we really do want to grow the game. Introduce children, boys and girls, who have an affinity for sport to volleyball when they’re introduced to baseball, basketball, hockey, and all the rest. Put up a net and a grass or sand court at your local park. Get out there and pass and hit a little yourself. It’s gonna take time, and god-forbid money, but anything worth the fight does. New traditions will start simply because someone starts them (which was what the USPV was going for).
If we want to forge a greater place for our game in the North American sport pantheon, we have to make it happen. You and me. I don’t know what the odds are. They’re probably not that great, not for ourselves anyway. But that’s never meant a fight wasn’t worth fighting. Make just one new person into a fan, and you’ve made a difference. If all of us do that — what a difference it will be. There are no easy answers, but we must give it a try.
The Net Set 
Leave a comment