Courtesy USA Volleyball
In the present day’s visitor columnist is Jamie Davies, CEO of USA Volleyball.
For anybody listening to the sports activities trade in the USA, it’s onerous to not discover volleyball’s skyward trajectory. The game is on hearth.
Within the 2022-23 season, USA Volleyball membership elevated by 9.6% to 408,000 (the most important proportion progress since 1998), and the expansion was mirrored in any respect ranges of play, all genders and all age teams. Junior girls grew by 9.2%, junior males elevated 9.7% and the variety of grownup members ended the membership season up 11.6%.
Volleyball is the No. 1 group participatory sport in highschool and school for women, and boys highschool volleyball numbers have elevated by 40% since 2017, making it the quickest rising highschool sport within the nation. Via a grant from USA Volleyball and the First Level Volleyball Basis, the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Convention added six new school males’s packages, and the NCAA has granted the convention champion a brand new automated bid to the NCAA event.
The thrill for the game goes past the junior sport. Till lately there had by no means been a profitable or sustainably viable skilled volleyball league in the USA. High volleyball gamers had been compelled to play internationally to earn a dwelling within the sport. That is about to alter—large time.
In 2021, Athletes Limitless launched skilled volleyball within the U.S., and now the league is within the midst of its third season with nationwide protection on ESPN platforms. This winter, the Skilled Volleyball Federation (PVF) will probably be launching a brand new league with franchises in seven cities, and in 2025 League One Volleyball (LOVB) will add knowledgeable league with six places throughout the nation.
The event of the skilled sport is critical for a number of causes. Three skilled leagues imply that many prime U.S. gamers, together with reigning Olympic gold medalists and nationwide group athletes, will forgo taking part in overseas and are dedicated to collaborating in these home leagues. This consists of gamers reminiscent of Jordyn Poulter, Kelsey Robinson, Lauren Carlini, Justine Wong-Orantes, Hailey Washington and Morgan Hentz, simply to call a couple of. It additionally implies that prime international gamers will probably be signing to play within the U.S. Now we have already seen this development; all-time greats together with Brazilian legend Sheilla Castro, Dominican standout Betty De La Cruz and Thai icon Nootsara Tomkom have come to America to play for Athletes Limitless. For the primary time, world-class skilled volleyball will probably be performed recurrently proper right here within the States.
As for fan curiosity within the sport, look no additional than Lincoln, Neb., for proof. On Aug. 30, 92,003 followers stuffed the College of Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium to observe the Cornhuskers’ girls’s volleyball group play Omaha in what was actually a spectacle. The attendance broke the attendance world document for any girls’s sporting occasion, besting the earlier mark set for a Champions League soccer match in Barcelona.
That huge fanbase has led to vastly elevated media protection over the previous couple of years. For the primary time, ESPN has put a number of common season school matches on their prime channel, garnering excessive rankings, and will probably be airing the nationwide championship sport on ABC. After sustained funding by the Huge Ten Community in girls’s volleyball, it’s constantly the third most watched sport on the community behind solely soccer and males’s basketball.
Briefly, volleyball is having a second, and USA Volleyball and our 40 areas are right here to serve our rising athlete and fan communities as we construct on the game’s momentum to create a affluent future.
Davis is accountable for the general strategic route and every day operation of the volleyball’s nationwide governing physique. Previous to becoming a member of USA Volleyball, he was the founder and president of Jomandrew Sports activities and Leisure, a consultancy; president of Fanatics, the most important on-line retailer of licensed sports activities merchandise; president of the Versus cable community; and managing director of ESPN Star Sports activities.
