Increased physicality in men's volleyball has changed the game, boosted its popularity

Though he has made his living as a volleyball coach, Penn State’s Mark Pavlik is a student of all sports, just as likely to talk about screen passes and slap shots as he is spikes and side-outs.

Pavlik, a Derry grad, recently was watching highlights of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers. One of the players who grabbed his attention was safety Mike Wagner. By just about any standard, Pavlik said, Wagner was a pretty average-looking guy.

Nowadays, Pavlik noted, guys who would have been linebackers or, perhaps, defensive ends are playing safety in the NFL.

That has been the evolution of sports in the past couple of decades: athletes gradually getting bigger, stronger and faster.

“Look at baseball,” the 30th-year coach said. “Home run, strikeout. All of a sudden, that’s become more physical. You look at hockey, and I think (the NHL) is outgrowing the North American rink size. … I think everything has just developed.”

Men’s volleyball is no different. It always has been a physical sport, but over the past several years, the level has gone up a few notches. The sky-scraping vertical leaps and live arms long associated with men’s volleyball are the focal points, and more traditional aspects of the game have become complementary.

John Speraw, coach of reigning national champion UCLA and the U.S. men’s national team, recognizes the trend as well. In his playing days with the Bruins, Speraw was a middle blocker at 6-foot-3. Now, many teams have setters taller than that, including his own: Sophomore Andrew Rowan stands 6-6.

In his day, Speraw said, it was a big deal if a player could touch 11 feet. Now many are approaching 12 feet and beyond.

“Certainly over the last 20 years we’ve gotten a lot better at strength and conditioning, nutrition,” he said. “I think you have seen that across all sports. It seems to me athletes are maximizing their physical potential across all sports more and more.

“I also think as boys volleyball has continued to grow, we’re just seeing more and more good athletes come into the sport, and there’s more athletes — bigger athletes — to choose from.”

So men’s volleyball has tried to use the physicality to its advantage.

Grip it and rip it

Pinpointing the start of increased emphasis on physical play is difficult. Pavlik said even in the 1970s, most college teams had at least one player who had the reputation of being a big hitter.

The trend picked up in the 1980s and ’90s, and now, Pavlik said, every team has multiple players who can hit with power and serve 65 or 70 mph.

“I don’t think coaches sat down with the intent of making the game more interesting,” Pavlik said. “Like anything else, coaches sat down and said, ‘What do we need to win? We need physicality.’ ”

Longtime St. Francis (Pa.) coach Mike Rumbaugh has a theory as to what might have tipped the scales, particularly with serving. He points to the 2016 and 2017 seasons when Ohio State won back-to-back national titles. Those Buckeye teams, he said, created havoc for opposing teams via their serve.

They served as hard as they could, mistakes be damned.

“I think that’s when everybody realized, we’re not going to focus on the service error,” Rumbaugh said. “We’re going to focus on the service ace.”

So more players started cranking up their serves. And as the jump serve came more into vogue, the number of “fastballs” coming over the net increased.

Rumbaugh said Red Flash junior Nathan Zini (Seton LaSalle), for example, consistently can serve in the low 70s.

But therein lies the other side of men’s volleyball’s “grip it and rip it” mentality. Serving has become much more of a risk-reward endeavor.

Saint Vincent men’s coach Kate McCauley said she often goes home from matches with a self-inflicted bruise on her leg as a result of digging her pen into it. The source of her consternation is missed serves.

“Your serve is basically a free throw,” said McCauley, a former Bearcats player in her third year as the men’s coach. “It’s a free point that you can get somebody out of system.”

Seeing a stretch where men continually pound the ball into the net can get exasperating for coaches and fans. But coaches have become more willing to grit their teeth and live with the ups and downs.

“You’re not seeing anybody in the major leagues bunting the ball anymore,” Speraw said. “… You’re not seeing basketball players taking many 15-foot jump shots because they recognize they get more value from stepping a few feet back and taking their chance at a 3-pointer.

“The other corollary to this is it’s not just the physicality. It’s just the speed and efficiency of offenses. … You have to take some risks from the service line or you’re going to lose that point anyway.”

For McCauley, seeing volleyball from the perspective of a player and now as a woman coaching men, she has learned to work with the differences in the style of play.

Jaime Snyder understands, too. A former player for the women’s team at SUNY Brockport, Snyder is in her second season coaching the Division II D’Youville men’s program, which plays in the Northeast Conference with St. Francis.

Like McCauley, she has had to adapt her thinking for working with the men’s team. But she hasn’t been hesitant to bring in some finesse from the women’s game while maintaining the physical play.

“How can we be creative with the physicality, but how can we create more opportunities for them to be offensive?” Snyder said. “There’s other ways than just hitting the balls 100 mph.”

Pavlik calls it “appropriate physicality.”

Though thunderous spikes can be a momentum grabber much like a slam dunk in basketball, there can be a tendency to get carried away. Trying to hit a ball through a block every time isn’t the best approach.

Snyder said she often puts her players through two-on-two drills to show them there are other ways to manufacture a kill. It forces them to think about different methods to put away the ball, then those skills, she said, can come into play in a regular match.

Speraw said a number of factors go into deciding when to swing away and when to settle for simply keeping the ball in play.

“There’s gradients,” he said. “What is the right time? Who are the right athletes to swing away? And what is the circumstance within that individual play?”

Added Pavlik: “There are going to be balls that God himself can’t put away. So don’t give them an easy point. … Be appropriately physical. Challenge the block high and hard. Challenge the block by adjusting your rhythm and swing and look for a ball to be blocked back to you. Recycle the play to your advantage.”

Growth potential

Every sport has its so-called purists. Volleyball is no different, and some might lament the way the men’s game is going, with some of the “technical” aspects seemingly being ignored.

Pavlik questions what is defined as “technical.” As rules change — the way they have for decades, he noted — coaches simply are adapting.

“I think coaches are always going to coach to make sure they are teaching the most efficient way of moving, the most efficient way of controlling the ball that enables them to score the maximum amount of points as possible within the rules,” he said. “It’s just becoming a bigger, stronger, faster game now.”

And that, coaches agree, is a good thing.

“When people started realizing it’s not a picnic sport … then the better athletes started playing,” Rumbaugh said.

Speraw, in addition to his coaching duties, serves on the board of First Point Volleyball Foundation. The foundation’s main goal is to grow volleyball opportunities for boys and collegiate men. Thanks, in part, to First Point’s efforts, 10 states have sanctioned boys high school volleyball since the organization’s founding in 2016. Several others have classified it as an “emerging sport.”

According to the American Volleyball Coaches Association, more than 77,000 boys participated in high school volleyball nationwide during the 2022-23 academic year. That’s up 20,000 from six years prior, and Speraw said he believes by the time the 2028 Olympics are held in Los Angeles, that number will creep closer to 100,000.

AVCA numbers also show that between 2011-12 and 2021-22, college men’s volleyball participation grew 79%. Two years ago, the Division II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, which is composed of historically Black schools, added the sport. The NEC added it last season. Two more Division I schools will begin next season: Maryland Eastern Shore and Northern Kentucky.

Closer to home, the D-III Presidents’ Athletic Conference will sponsor men’s volleyball for the first time next season. McCauley’s Saint Vincent squad will be part of that.

“I was an integral part of getting the men’s volleyball program to Saint Vincent, and that’s something that’s near and dear to my heart,” she said. “…. I think it’s just awesome how much more thought is going into the men’s game.”

Outside hitters built like strong safeties pounding the ball into the floor and servers who can exceed 70 mph have been huge selling points as the men’s game continues to grow.

“I think volleyball is such a fun sport to watch,” Snyder said. “Showing (kids) something other than the soccer and the basketball and the baseball and the football, it’s definitely intriguing to some of the younger generations. It’s definitely starting to grow a lot faster, and it’s kind of exciting to see.”

And as more colleges add men’s volleyball at the higher levels, there will be more scholarships to offer, which, Rumbaugh said will draw still more — and better — athletes.

“There’s a lot of high school kids who didn’t have a chance to get a scholarship because there wasn’t enough schools to go to to get rewarded,” he said. “Now more parents are seeing the scholarship aspect of the sport, they’re going to let their kids play volleyball because it’s an avenue to get their kids into college.”

And Speraw believes the athleticism — and potential — in men’s volleyball is just scratching the surface.

“You hear a lot of people come and see a men’s volleyball game who haven’t seen it before, and they make a comment on how amazing it is to watch,” he said. “On the men’s side, we need to get more people in the stands so they can understand and appreciate the physicality and athleticism that’s in our sport. We need to try to leverage the strength of our sport for sure.”