Parity in College Volleyball
This is the first of three articles addressing the subject of parity in womens college volleyball. The second part will be published later this week. The third part will be published after the NCAA Championships in December.
There has been plenty of talk this season about parity in the sport from fans out on internet forum volleytalk.proboards.com. Plenty of talk about the number of upsets and near-upsets. Plenty of talk about if theres been more upsets this year than in seasons past. And, speculation if parity will impact what happens come tournament time. Will the level of parity change the end-results when the season gets down to four teams?
So how does all of this impact Flyer Volleyball and the goal of getting to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament? Well break the subject matter of parity into several areas to evaluate how the competitive landscape is changing or not.
The Prep Talent Pool Continues to Grow
As reported by ESPN.com, in 2015, for the first time, more high school girls played volleyball than basketball per the National Federation of State High School Associations participation report. The next year, volleyball widened the gap, adding 4,133 players while basketball lost 276. But even more startling, it was reported for the last decade (at that time), volleyball gained 40,000 girls while basketball lost 23,000.
According to the American Volleyball Coaches Associations website (avca.com), in 2017-18, the NFHS participation report documented that volleyball remained the top team sport for girls for the fourth consecutive year with 446,583 participates. Texas boasted the highest numbers with 47,415, followed by California with 45,139. Those two states account for 20% of the prep participants.
Additionally, in 27 states, volleyball was played by more girls than any other team sport. Dayton has brought in players from both Texas and California in recent years. Looking closer to home, in Ohio 17,568 girls played volleyball compared to 15,045 playing basketball; Michigan VB-19,416 to BB-15,659; Missouri VB 10,441 to BB-9,971; IN VB-9,438 to BB-7,839; KY VB-6,221 to BB-5,313; and ILL VB- 21,961 to BB-16,399. Only neighboring state Pennsylvania had more basketball players (21,390) than volleyball (10,656).
USA Volleyballs website lists 2018-19 data claiming volleyball is the most popular team sport for girls in high school with 452,000 girls on varsity-level programs and more than 63,000 boys playing varsity. The prep boys numbers are important because they are future fans, coaches and fathers that influence a daughters participation decisions. As a sport, there was a 26% gain in participation over the last two years. And according to the avca.com site, 76% of the volleyball members of USVA are junior girls ages 10-18.
Theres a lot of great young athletes participating in the sport and that certainly raises the level of the recruits schools are bringing in, said UD Head Coach Tim Horsmon. The growth of the game of volleyball is a great thing and Im sure it will positively impact the level of play at the youth level going forward.
Volleyball is an American sport. The birthplace is Holyoke, MA back in 1895. USAV was founded in 1928 and in 1947 joined with 11 other countries to found the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB). Currently, FIVB is the largest international sports federation in the world with 220 national federations. (Surprisingly, its bigger than soccer.) USAV offers programs for youth, high school, collegiate and adult members from age 7-and-under to 75-and-over. However, in America, football is still the number one sport, followed by basketball. This is driven by both the professional leagues and college programs. That fact makes the following even more impressive.
According to USAV, the volleyball website is listed as the No. 1 most visited site throughout the United States Olympic Committee portal www.teamusa.org with traffic of more than a million page views monthly. Ten years ago, volleyball was an emerging sport. The data above is evidence if volleyball hasnt become a main-stream sport yet, it will be sooner rather than later.
Several factors are helping the sport grow. The added exposure its getting at the collegiate level through television with the Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12 networks plus the increased coverage during conference championship tournaments and the NCAA Championships is expanding the viewership. Internet streaming of matches has also contributed to the sport at the college level. And continued success at the summer Olympics from the National Team garners additional coverage of the sport and growth of the fan base.
Former North Carolina player Hayley McCorkle was quoted on ESPN.com regarding the television coverage and its impact on young girls.
I have a little cousin who watched the (NCAA) tournament, McCorkle said. She didnt know anything about volleyball until she saw it on TV. Having it out there for more young girls to watch allows them to be more drawn into the game.
As noted above, there are more girls playing volleyball than basketball. Understand, there are still a large percentage of those girls playing both at the prep level. But, its more than television coverage driving the growth. Some note there has been a cultural crossover.
Theres been a huge African-American crossover into our sport, and its become the social norm now to play volleyball, whereas 10 to 15 years ago, it was basketball, Texas volleyball coach Jerritt Elliott said on ESPN.com. It appeals not just to the super tall but the super small. The super small has a niche with the libero and the (defensive specialist) position where they can find success at a very high level.
In the 2017 ESPN.com article, they had several examples of players who stated they just liked volleyball better than basketball for various reasons. Stanfords Kathryn Plummer, senior outside hitter and 2-time National player of the Year, summarized some of the reasons.
I love basketball to watch. I love to play volleyball, Plummer said. In basketball, I could post up and score. In volleyball, you have to be good at everything. You have to work together more. (In basketball), you can own the court. It can be your show. For volleyball, you need everybody.
The Coaching Talent Pool Continues to Grow
No discussion regarding parity in collegiate volleyball is complete without acknowledging it might be driven by the increase in the talent level of coaches at all levels. From those 7-year-old club teams through the Olympic Team coaching staff, there has been an increase in people wanting to learn and coach volleyball. Most collegiate programs have volunteer coaches who are not getting paid a salary. Dedicated individuals who are making personal financial sacrifices just to learn the game in hopes of future employment in the sport.
Running parallel with the timeline of volleyballs growth and overtaking basketball at the prep level the last five years, is the fact that more head coaches are emerging from candidates that have played the game, both men and women, at the Division I level, in the USOC volleyball pipeline and professionally overseas.
There was a time not too long ago when less than a dozen coaches were considered icons of the sport. Names that included among others, Russ Rose (Penn State), John Dunning (Stanford), John Cook (Nebraska), and Don Shaw (Stanford). There have been 38 NCAA DI Womens Volleyball Champions, but only 10 schools have taken home the trophy (USC, HI, UCLA, Pacific, TX, Long Beach St, Stanford, Penn St, NE and Washington). More recently, Stanford, Nebraska and Penn State have each won two in the last six years. Rose, Dunning, Cook and Shaw coached half of all the championships (19 of 38). In the last 20 years, only seven coaches have won, but last year did usher in that seventh coach in Kevin Hambly of Stanford. Also of note is that no female head coach has won a championship. Mary Wise from Florida has come the closest, finishing second in 2003 and 2017.
The historical data shows that within the coaching ranks, parity has not settled in yet. If you believe the first step to winning championships starts with having top-level talent, then parity will begin with spreading the best talent around to more schools. Programs that have coaches who can recruit this talent have the biggest advantage. Coaches that have played the game, played in the USOC pipeline and played overseas, may prove to have a competitive advantage in the near future when recruiting high-level talent, because the prep players can see themselves and their aspirations in a coach who has been there and done that. Hambly is one of those coaches. He played collegiately at BYU were he was a first-team All American and lead the nation in blocks. Hes from California, one of the top 2 states with the most prep girls playing volleyball. He played professionally in France. He spent two years as a volunteer assistant at the collegiate level and served as an assistant for the U.S. National Team for several years. Hambly checks all the boxes for the new-breed of college volleyball coaches. There are others that are a little younger than him working to build the same resume.
There are a lot of great young coaches coming up through the college ranks, said Horsmon. A lot of them have played the game at a high level. That first hand knowledge of having been in the trenches and experienced some of the things their athletes are experiencing is very valuable.
Digging a little deeper, and looking at the number of schools securing Top 100 recruits and the percentage of top-talent committing to non-PS schools, its possible an argument is beginning to form that might change the landscape over the next couple years.
Looking at prepvolleyball.coms Top 100 recruits between 2015-2020, there was a tick up in 2020. The Top 100 recruits committed to 57 different schools and 19% of the players committed to non-P5 institutions. Those two numbers were the highest in the 6-year snapshot. It takes three years to establish a trend. So, if between 2020-2023, there are higher numbers in three of these four years, a trend will be established. Time will tell. Here are the current numbers:
2020 57 schools/13 Non-P5 schools/19% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2019 53 schools/10 Non-P5 schools/14% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2018 51 schools/10 Non-P5 schools/15% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2017 54 schools/9 Non-P5 schools/13% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2016 55 schools/10 Non-P5 schools/14% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2015 52 schools/12 Non-P5 schools/19% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
Looking at Daytons performance with Top 100 recruits during this time period, every-other-year, UD has secured Top 100 recruits. In 2016 we landed two, #23 Brook Westbeld and #73 Jamie Peterson. In 2018 we landed #66 Alli Papesh. And, in the fall of 2020, we have a verbal commitment from #51 Alayna Yates. Yates is a 6-6 MB from Cedar Rapids, IA. She plays in the largest class for high school sports in Iowa and Six Pack VB Club.
In the second part of this series, we will break down the ranked talent of every school on Daytons schedule this season. We have separated it for out-of-conference and A10 opponents. We will also explore if there have been more upsets, near upsets, 5-set matches and thoughts from other volleyball fans on the topic of upsets and parity this season. And, Flyers coach Tim Horsmon has something to say about the mid-major programs that can beat P5 competition.
There has been plenty of talk this season about parity in the sport from fans out on internet forum volleytalk.proboards.com. Plenty of talk about the number of upsets and near-upsets. Plenty of talk about if theres been more upsets this year than in seasons past. And, speculation if parity will impact what happens come tournament time. Will the level of parity change the end-results when the season gets down to four teams?
So how does all of this impact Flyer Volleyball and the goal of getting to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament? Well break the subject matter of parity into several areas to evaluate how the competitive landscape is changing or not.
The Prep Talent Pool Continues to Grow
As reported by ESPN.com, in 2015, for the first time, more high school girls played volleyball than basketball per the National Federation of State High School Associations participation report. The next year, volleyball widened the gap, adding 4,133 players while basketball lost 276. But even more startling, it was reported for the last decade (at that time), volleyball gained 40,000 girls while basketball lost 23,000.
According to the American Volleyball Coaches Associations website (avca.com), in 2017-18, the NFHS participation report documented that volleyball remained the top team sport for girls for the fourth consecutive year with 446,583 participates. Texas boasted the highest numbers with 47,415, followed by California with 45,139. Those two states account for 20% of the prep participants.
Additionally, in 27 states, volleyball was played by more girls than any other team sport. Dayton has brought in players from both Texas and California in recent years. Looking closer to home, in Ohio 17,568 girls played volleyball compared to 15,045 playing basketball; Michigan VB-19,416 to BB-15,659; Missouri VB 10,441 to BB-9,971; IN VB-9,438 to BB-7,839; KY VB-6,221 to BB-5,313; and ILL VB- 21,961 to BB-16,399. Only neighboring state Pennsylvania had more basketball players (21,390) than volleyball (10,656).
USA Volleyballs website lists 2018-19 data claiming volleyball is the most popular team sport for girls in high school with 452,000 girls on varsity-level programs and more than 63,000 boys playing varsity. The prep boys numbers are important because they are future fans, coaches and fathers that influence a daughters participation decisions. As a sport, there was a 26% gain in participation over the last two years. And according to the avca.com site, 76% of the volleyball members of USVA are junior girls ages 10-18.
Theres a lot of great young athletes participating in the sport and that certainly raises the level of the recruits schools are bringing in, said UD Head Coach Tim Horsmon. The growth of the game of volleyball is a great thing and Im sure it will positively impact the level of play at the youth level going forward.
Volleyball is an American sport. The birthplace is Holyoke, MA back in 1895. USAV was founded in 1928 and in 1947 joined with 11 other countries to found the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB). Currently, FIVB is the largest international sports federation in the world with 220 national federations. (Surprisingly, its bigger than soccer.) USAV offers programs for youth, high school, collegiate and adult members from age 7-and-under to 75-and-over. However, in America, football is still the number one sport, followed by basketball. This is driven by both the professional leagues and college programs. That fact makes the following even more impressive.
According to USAV, the volleyball website is listed as the No. 1 most visited site throughout the United States Olympic Committee portal www.teamusa.org with traffic of more than a million page views monthly. Ten years ago, volleyball was an emerging sport. The data above is evidence if volleyball hasnt become a main-stream sport yet, it will be sooner rather than later.
Several factors are helping the sport grow. The added exposure its getting at the collegiate level through television with the Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12 networks plus the increased coverage during conference championship tournaments and the NCAA Championships is expanding the viewership. Internet streaming of matches has also contributed to the sport at the college level. And continued success at the summer Olympics from the National Team garners additional coverage of the sport and growth of the fan base.
Former North Carolina player Hayley McCorkle was quoted on ESPN.com regarding the television coverage and its impact on young girls.
I have a little cousin who watched the (NCAA) tournament, McCorkle said. She didnt know anything about volleyball until she saw it on TV. Having it out there for more young girls to watch allows them to be more drawn into the game.
As noted above, there are more girls playing volleyball than basketball. Understand, there are still a large percentage of those girls playing both at the prep level. But, its more than television coverage driving the growth. Some note there has been a cultural crossover.
Theres been a huge African-American crossover into our sport, and its become the social norm now to play volleyball, whereas 10 to 15 years ago, it was basketball, Texas volleyball coach Jerritt Elliott said on ESPN.com. It appeals not just to the super tall but the super small. The super small has a niche with the libero and the (defensive specialist) position where they can find success at a very high level.
In the 2017 ESPN.com article, they had several examples of players who stated they just liked volleyball better than basketball for various reasons. Stanfords Kathryn Plummer, senior outside hitter and 2-time National player of the Year, summarized some of the reasons.
I love basketball to watch. I love to play volleyball, Plummer said. In basketball, I could post up and score. In volleyball, you have to be good at everything. You have to work together more. (In basketball), you can own the court. It can be your show. For volleyball, you need everybody.
The Coaching Talent Pool Continues to Grow
No discussion regarding parity in collegiate volleyball is complete without acknowledging it might be driven by the increase in the talent level of coaches at all levels. From those 7-year-old club teams through the Olympic Team coaching staff, there has been an increase in people wanting to learn and coach volleyball. Most collegiate programs have volunteer coaches who are not getting paid a salary. Dedicated individuals who are making personal financial sacrifices just to learn the game in hopes of future employment in the sport.
Running parallel with the timeline of volleyballs growth and overtaking basketball at the prep level the last five years, is the fact that more head coaches are emerging from candidates that have played the game, both men and women, at the Division I level, in the USOC volleyball pipeline and professionally overseas.
There was a time not too long ago when less than a dozen coaches were considered icons of the sport. Names that included among others, Russ Rose (Penn State), John Dunning (Stanford), John Cook (Nebraska), and Don Shaw (Stanford). There have been 38 NCAA DI Womens Volleyball Champions, but only 10 schools have taken home the trophy (USC, HI, UCLA, Pacific, TX, Long Beach St, Stanford, Penn St, NE and Washington). More recently, Stanford, Nebraska and Penn State have each won two in the last six years. Rose, Dunning, Cook and Shaw coached half of all the championships (19 of 38). In the last 20 years, only seven coaches have won, but last year did usher in that seventh coach in Kevin Hambly of Stanford. Also of note is that no female head coach has won a championship. Mary Wise from Florida has come the closest, finishing second in 2003 and 2017.
The historical data shows that within the coaching ranks, parity has not settled in yet. If you believe the first step to winning championships starts with having top-level talent, then parity will begin with spreading the best talent around to more schools. Programs that have coaches who can recruit this talent have the biggest advantage. Coaches that have played the game, played in the USOC pipeline and played overseas, may prove to have a competitive advantage in the near future when recruiting high-level talent, because the prep players can see themselves and their aspirations in a coach who has been there and done that. Hambly is one of those coaches. He played collegiately at BYU were he was a first-team All American and lead the nation in blocks. Hes from California, one of the top 2 states with the most prep girls playing volleyball. He played professionally in France. He spent two years as a volunteer assistant at the collegiate level and served as an assistant for the U.S. National Team for several years. Hambly checks all the boxes for the new-breed of college volleyball coaches. There are others that are a little younger than him working to build the same resume.
There are a lot of great young coaches coming up through the college ranks, said Horsmon. A lot of them have played the game at a high level. That first hand knowledge of having been in the trenches and experienced some of the things their athletes are experiencing is very valuable.
Digging a little deeper, and looking at the number of schools securing Top 100 recruits and the percentage of top-talent committing to non-PS schools, its possible an argument is beginning to form that might change the landscape over the next couple years.
Looking at prepvolleyball.coms Top 100 recruits between 2015-2020, there was a tick up in 2020. The Top 100 recruits committed to 57 different schools and 19% of the players committed to non-P5 institutions. Those two numbers were the highest in the 6-year snapshot. It takes three years to establish a trend. So, if between 2020-2023, there are higher numbers in three of these four years, a trend will be established. Time will tell. Here are the current numbers:
2020 57 schools/13 Non-P5 schools/19% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2019 53 schools/10 Non-P5 schools/14% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2018 51 schools/10 Non-P5 schools/15% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2017 54 schools/9 Non-P5 schools/13% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2016 55 schools/10 Non-P5 schools/14% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
2015 52 schools/12 Non-P5 schools/19% of players committed to Non-P5 schools
Looking at Daytons performance with Top 100 recruits during this time period, every-other-year, UD has secured Top 100 recruits. In 2016 we landed two, #23 Brook Westbeld and #73 Jamie Peterson. In 2018 we landed #66 Alli Papesh. And, in the fall of 2020, we have a verbal commitment from #51 Alayna Yates. Yates is a 6-6 MB from Cedar Rapids, IA. She plays in the largest class for high school sports in Iowa and Six Pack VB Club.
In the second part of this series, we will break down the ranked talent of every school on Daytons schedule this season. We have separated it for out-of-conference and A10 opponents. We will also explore if there have been more upsets, near upsets, 5-set matches and thoughts from other volleyball fans on the topic of upsets and parity this season. And, Flyers coach Tim Horsmon has something to say about the mid-major programs that can beat P5 competition.