A year ago at this time, Americans were glued to their television sets watching the 2012 London Olympics. Women volleyball fans enjoyed a double dose of winning as the American women’s team captured a silver medal and Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh-Jennings slipped past teammates April Ross and Jen Kessy to win gold and silver medals for the United States.
The dominance by the American women drew greater attention to the sport and will likely cause girls and young women to pursue the sport. In the book Talent and the Secret Life of Teams, Terry Pettit discusses the future of beach and team (six-person) volleyball.
The following excerpts from the chapter, “Make Room for the Beach” describes where he thinks the sport is headed. (Note: the book was written in 2008.)
The possibility that women’s beach volleyball could become a sanctioned NCAA sport is intriguing to me because the results of such a decision could impact indoor volleyball in ways that we haven’t imagined. Never underestimate the attraction of an environment where scantily clad coeds can be watched without the threat of arrest or restraining order. If you could add a ten-minute halftime show where fraternity lads blow up cats wearing the opponent’s school colors, we might finally attract undergraduates to a non-revenue sport.
I believe that with the arrival of women’s beach volleyball there is a good chance that the indoor six-person game might go the way of six person women’s basketball, meaning that there may be a few outposts in Nebraska, South Dakota, and areas of the country with a significant Amish population that would continue to play it, but it would be deader than keeping one foot on the floor on date night at the collegiate level.
Why? Beach volleyball has one significant advantage over the indoor game. The biggest challenge in indoor volleyball is that we had too many people on the court. In basketball there are five players and 5000 square feet to cover. In volleyball there are six people and 900 square feet. Player can’t take three steps without running into a teammate standing up in her base position.
Athletic directors and coaches might favor beach volleyball over indoor volleyball because they mistakenly believe their team would have the opportunity to be more nationally competitive in the two woman game. They’re thinking would go like this: we aren’t able to recruit the explosive 6’4″ players that are required to advance to a Final Four; we have a better chance of landing those 5’9″ kids who are great ball handlers.
They would be wrong. How many truly great liberos have you seen in the past five years? Just because someone is less then 5’9″ tall, plays volleyball , and is explosive does not guarantee she can handle the ball any better than the kid bagging the ice cream on top of your bread at your local Piggly Wiggly. While junior volleyball has impacted technical skills, bracelets and T-shirt sales, and the pocketbooks of qualifier hosts, it has not done much to teach court awareness and a sense of the game. The few extraordinary ball handlers available are going to be recruited by the same schools that are getting commitments today from the kids blessed with vertical jumps and arm speed.
Each university can choose the type of sand it plays on. The texture can vary from heavy river sand in the upper Midwest to pea gravel in southern Illinois to the ground microscopic snails of Hawaii’s north shore. City universities can play on chipped asphalt and glass, and Ivy League schools on anything you can compost.
Fans admitted to a beach volleyball event would have their fingerprints scanned upon entry, making it easier to identify and locate the stalkers and sex offenders who are less likely to purchase season tickets to women’s sports where the athletes are covered with armor, like fencing and lacrosse.
Finally, every host school is allowed to say over the beach public address system when the matches begin, “Welcome to the Beach!” Even if the nearest ocean is the one where the ice is melting faster than the coach can signal for a sub after a shanked serve.
Without a doubt, beach volleyball will continue to increase in popularity, but will it be the format of choice in years to come? The industry is too entrenched in the six-person game, i.e. from a business perspective that seems unlikely.
Click here for additional information about Pettit’s book.
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