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With Black History Month coming to a close, it seems the right time to see what doors continue to open for African-Americans in men’s collegiate volleyball.
That six Historically Black Colleges &Universities in the 15-member Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference officially are sponsoring the sport this season is a huge step in the right direction, bringing awareness of volleyball to states where — with the exception of Ohio, where Central State is located — even Division I women’s programs haven’t had that much notoriety nationally.
The SIAC’s first-year teams haven’t found that much success on the court yet. The six are a combined 4-50 with Fort Valley (Ga.) State (1-3, 1-0 SIAC), Kentucky State (1-3), Benedict in South Carolina (1-6, 1-1) and Edward Waters in Georgia (1-9) each with just one victory, and Morehouse in Georgia (0-3, 0-1) and Central (Ohio) State (0-6) winless.
Just 33 matches — only two in conference — have been played so far, with SIAC men’s volleyball the victims of COVID putting programs on pause by either those in the SIAC or those of their opponents. That included six cancellations for Kentucky State, which was to have played the University of Hawaii at the First Point College Challenge in Austin.
Still, there have been individual successes as celebrated by the league’s weekly honors, two of which on Monday went to players Hawai’i fans came to know in the first week of the season at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center. Edward Waters’ freshman middle Oscar Jaquez was named Defensive POW and teammate Kenyon Hayes, a freshman, was Setter of the Week.
And there was cause for gratitude that no one was injured when Fort Valley State’s bus overturned during the 3-hour ride back home after Friday’s 3-0 loss at Tusculum some 150 miles away in Greenville, Tenn. (The Wildcats postponed Saturday’s home match with Emmanuel College, FVS’s sixth postponement or cancellation in six weeks).
At least it’s a start for the Division II programs whose budgets would be described not as shoe-string but more like velcro … hoping something will stick to make it work. In 2019, the SIAC received a $1 million grant, from $600,000 First Point Volleyball Foundation and $400,000 from USA Volleyball.
It sounded overly ambitious when FPVF co-founder John Speraw, the coach of both the U.S. national and UCLA men’s teams, said, “We talk at USA Volleyball about the ‘Path to the Podium.’ It is not outlandish to think that a young man playing in the SIAC in 2021 could be an Olympian in 2028 or 2032.”
(That 2021 start was pushed back a year when the SIAC canceled all 2020-21 athletic competition).
Getting to the Games doesn’t seem that far fetched when considering the experience of hurdling great Edwin Moses, a two-time Olympic gold medalist (1976, 1984). When he enrolled at Morehouse in the 1970s, the school had no track.
Moses’ son Julian would have played volleyball for Morehouse if the Maroon Tigers had a program. Instead, the 6-foot-4 hitter had a four-year career at Lewis, playing against the Warriors twice: 2018 in the Outrigger Invitational and 2019 in the NCAA Tournament semifinal.
What is more outlandish is that the U.S. men’s Olympic team has never had a Black player on the roster.
A vocal proponent of seeing that change is former Warrior Jason Olive, the first African-American to earn first-team All-American honors (1995). An undersized middle (6-4) on UH’s first NCAA final four team, Olive recalled his time at Hawaii where “you could count on one hand the number of African-Americans in the sport,” he said in a phone call from California. “I knew of Dain Blanton (Pepperdine), Craig Collins (IPFW), maybe a couple at Rutgers.There were very, very few on rosters, let alone starting.
“That I was the first (first teamer) so many things had to align. At the time, your team basically had to make the final four, you had to be an Olympic team-caliber player. For me to achieve that status was a lot of validation.”
Olive didn’t need volleyball to define him. As a child, he studied drama under Jane Fonda, and already was a well-known fashion model when arriving in Manoa in 1991. He went on to play beach professionally, continued modeling as well as acting, and considered Terence Knapp, the late UH Emeritus Professor of Theatre, as well as the late fashion journalist icon Andre Leon Talley as mentors.
Olive’s multi-pronged career has continued with TV and movie roles, screenwriting, directing and producing, and he has been named one of the Top 20 Emerging Photographers.
But always there is volleyball, from the JayO Invitational Pro-Am Charity Event to the Los Angeles Volleyball Club, the latter where he is club director.
Olive said he is honest with Black parents bringing their young players to LAVBC.
“I’ll tell them that their daughter likely will be one of just about none at the tournament,” he said. “Some of these parents have never seen tournaments with all White people. It’s a conversation I have to have.
“I’ve discussed this with John (Speraw). The USA Volleyball system has the best (feeder) structure of any sport, with the High Performance (program). But there’s a funnel problem. The funnel is too small, especially for boys. It needs to be expanded and I think it will begin to happen with the (Historically Black Colleges &Universities). The face of the sport is going to change.”
“I think the SIAC is a jump-start that will get more people exposed to the sport,” said Hawaii assistant coach Josh Walker, an African-American who was a second-team All-American for the Warriors in 2010. “More people are going to be watching, having eyes on it, and playing.
“Ten years ago, there were no new teams and now look at the growth.”
The addition of the SIAC and the Northeast Conference (NEC) in 2023 will give men’s volleyball seven conferences that are scheduled to receive automatic bids into the NCAA Division I-II Tournament by 2025. Currently, there are seven bids, five automatic (Big West, MPSF, MIVA, EIVA and Conference Carolinas) and two at-large.
Growth, then, will be an expanded tournament, potentially with 11 or 12 teams.
And growth will come with expanded access to the sport.
As Olive said when mentioning his first-team All-American accolades:
“It’s OK to go first … as long as you hold the door open.”
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Reach Cindy Luis
at cindy3luis@gmail.com.
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