Men’s volleyball hoping for spike in popularity

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Hundreds of high school-aged boys sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the stands and craned their necks for a better view of the floor as Ohio State inched closer to a dramatic five-set victory in the NCAA championship game.

Backers of men’s volleyball hoping for a growth spike would welcome more such scenes: young East Coast fans watching a Midwest school succeed in a sport that is still rooted in West Coast beaches and overshadowed by the women’s game.

“I just think that if a young player got a taste of what real men’s volleyball is like, they’ll realize it’s not backyard barbecue volleyball,” said Will Price, a former Penn State player training with USA Volleyball. “It’s a completely different sport than what a lot of people imagine — it’s fast, dynamic, and explosive.”

Enthusiasts such as Price believe recent developments have the game poised for a breakthrough.

The 2008 season brought Olympic golds for both the U.S. men’s beach and indoor team, as well as the women’s beach team. The women’s indoor team won the silver, falling to Brazil in the gold-medal game.

“No country has ever had, or may never have again, a performance like the USA at the last Olympics,” said Karch Kiraly, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and the assistant coach for the U.S. women’s national team.

The NCAA will add its first championship since 1985 with a new Division III men’s tournament next year. Four schools have recently added Division III men’s programs — Elmira, Kean, Rust and Thiel.

This year — the last season that Division I, II and III schools were grouped into the same tournament — Ohio State finally broke through for a championship in its third trip to the finals. Penn State is the only other school east of the Rockies to take the title, in 1994 and 2008.

“I don’t know if it’s an East, West or Midwest thing,” Buckeyes coach Pete Hanson said after his team won the NCAAs this month at Rec Hall on the Penn State campus. “I’d like to think it makes our whole sport get better.”

On the high school level, the game has expanded in the upper Midwest and Florida, said Kathy DeBoer, executive director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association. New York started a state high school tournament last season.

USA Volleyball for the first time partnered with the host site for the NCAAs — which this year was Penn State — to create a “Volleyball Extravaganza” on championship weekend. Price was among a group of recent college players who took part in a scrimmage and held a youth clinic.

“Let’s turn it into a celebration of men’s and boys’ volleyball,” said Penn State coach Mark Pavlik, who helped organize the weekend. “Let’s get the people in our sport together at the same place, where the stage is the biggest that our sport has.”

Yet the spotlight isn’t quite as bright as it is on women’s volleyball, in which there are far more college teams. It’s in large part an offshoot of Title IX, a federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools and opened academic and sports opportunities for women.

There were 23 Division I schools and 90 schools overall with men’s volleyball programs, according to NCAA data from the 2009-10 academic year, the latest available. That year, there were 319 Division I schools and 1,025 overall with women’s programs.

Scholarship opportunities are more limited for men. In Division I, men’s teams get the equivalent of 4.5 scholarships, which can be divided among more five or more team members if needed.

Division I women’s volleyball is considered a “head count” sport, and each team can award up to 12 full scholarships, but only one per athlete.

“If I was talking to a young female player, I would tell them ‘Look, you can pretty much get a full ride to school if you’re halfway decent at volleyball,”’ said Price, who plans to help organize camps this summer. “The men’s side is still playing catch up ... because there are so many more scholarships available to women than men.”

The impact on the collegiate level trickles down to high schools “just by the virtues of the quirks of Title IX,” Kiraly said. He estimated there are about 45,000-50,000 high school boys playing volleyball nationally — or about one-tenth the number of girls playing the sport in high school.

“Combine that with a tough economy, and it’s hard to get states and high schools to think about adding new programs, so that’s a challenge the men face for sure,” Kiraly said.

But where established high school teams don’t exist, club teams have sprouted if there is interest, said Jeff Mosher, a coordinator of region services programs for USA Volleyball. And beyond expansion in Division III and NAIA, intramural teams also have expanded on the college level so much that the National Collegiate Volleyball Federation is adding programming, he said.

Kiraly hopes that someday there may even be enough interest to establish a professional league in the United States. It would help keep the top U.S. college players, who often must play overseas, closer to the national team for training.

“The professional league side of it, that’s something nobody has figured an answer for yet,” Kiraly said. “But on the court, the high school and college levels, things are looking very good.”