“Volleyball is a girl’s sport.”
Those are words that I dread hearing whenever I tell someone that my sport is volleyball. Being a male volleyball player is tough. You are told that you should play a real sport and largely that you are less of a man for playing volleyball. This is what I learned to deal with growing up playing volleyball due to the dichotomy between the men’s game and the women’s game.
Women’s volleyball is one of the most popular sports among young women in the United States. High schools and colleges all around the country sport popular women’s volleyball programs with club teams to follow in suit. There is an amazing women’s volleyball culture in the United States.
When I moved from the West Coast to the East Coast for school, I was dumbfounded. I ran into an enormous amount of people who told me that boy’s volleyball was not offered in high schools. There were no club teams. There are few collegiate teams (21 Division 1 men's teams). It is a sport for women. I had known that volleyball was more popular for men in California as compared to the rest of the country, but I had never truly known the extent of it. This is a problem that is complicated. I constantly wonder how can it be solved. The game is beautiful when played by both women and men. It is beautiful in very different ways as the sport is played very differently depending on the gender, and perhaps it is that very difference that further perpetuates the lack of popularity among the men’s version of the sport.
I read an article on offtheblockblog.com that articulated the issues that men’s volleyball has in gaining popularity. The author, Joe McIntyre, wrote about how women’s volleyball is much more of an entertainment sport as opposed to the power sport of men’s volleyball. He discussed how, in women's volleyball there is this element of the unknown where it is unclear whether or not a ball will be killed on the next hit. There are longer rallies. There is more cheering and more elaborate celebration. The men's game is much more powerful and the rallies are shorter. When there is a good set, there is in increasingly lower chance of the defense getting the ball up. There are many different aspects of the women’s game that a crowd can come together around and cheer for more easily. There is beauty in the power of the men’s volleyball game just as there is beauty in the war of attrition that the women’s game largely can be. Despite the differences, I wonder if the primary reason for the lack of popularity is rooted in a lack of education about the sport.
Looking at trends, sports with more speed and action have larger crowds and fans. This is because it is exciting and invigorating for the crowd. They can feel the momentum shifts and the highs and the lows that the players are experiencing. With that, it is necessary to understand why it is that the momentum shifted. When I watch volleyball with people who did not grow up around volleyball it is tough to explain what exactly the difference between a lift and a double is, and rules as complex as the back row attack. These rules are no more complicated than, say, the off sides rule in soccer and hockey and lacrosse. There is a key point here as to why the rules of volleyball can seem so esoteric. It is tough to casually play volleyball in the backyard. There is a reason why soccer is the world’s sport. It can be played with just a ball and predetermined areas for the goal. With volleyball, that is not the case, as you need a net and a court with defined boundaries.
While that issue cannot be solved very easily, a great solution would be exposing boys to the game at a younger age. There really are no opportunities for young men to play volleyball until they are at least in middle school or high school. This leads to a lack of appreciation for a sport that is complex and great. It is not just a sport for girls to play in spandex. It is so much more than that. We just need to figure out a way for the world to learn the intricacies of the game and to learn to understand it at a young age. The amount of “converts” I know is astoundingly high. It is rare to find male volleyball players who played volleyball as their first sport. With girls, this is very different because our culture is one that further propagates this problem that is forcing men’s volleyball out of the picture. The rate of conversion for young men to the sport makes me very positive in regard to the potential for men's volleyball to become big.
Volleyball can be manly. Volleyball can be powerful. It is as complex and strategic as any other sport in the world. It deserves to be appreciated and loved by everyone -- both genders included.
