Trevor Phillips

 

Eli Zdonek

 

By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Catawba College’s men’s volleyball program will be on a big stage on Saturday, Feb. 22, when the University of Hawaii’s Rainbow Warriors, ranked fourth nationally, visit Goodman Arena.

The match starts at 11 a.m. That early start time is due to Hawaii playing two games that day as part of a four-game swing through North Carolina. After the match in Salisbury, Hawaii will head to Charlotte to take on Queens in a 6 p.m. matchup.

Hawaii also plays Queens on Jan. 21 and will start the tour at Belmont Abbey on Jan. 20.

If you didn’t know Catawba was in the men’s volleyball business, don’t feel badly. This is the first season for the men. The male Indians debuted with a loss in early January at the University of Charleston. They achieved their historic first victory two days later in Bristol, Tenn., against King University.

Catawba (5-6) lost at Fort Valley State on Thursday and is scheduled to play Erskine on Friday night.

The invention of volleyball happened in 1895. Origins of the sport can be traced back to a handful of creative minds in Massachusetts. Early YMCA volleyball games featured unlimited numbers of players and unlimited numbers of times contact with the ball could be made before getting it back over the net, but standardized rules came along by the 1920s, establishing the optimum number of players at six and limiting the number of hits to three — the familiar bump, set, spike choreography. The fast-paced sport is now one of the most popular for female athletes in NCHSAA high schools. It’s gaining momentum as a male high school sport in North Carolina, as well.

Volleyball gradually became an international game over the years and is played at a high level now everywhere from Mali to Italy to Brazil to China. Summer Olympics have become a splendid showcase for the sport, and it has expanded from an indoor game to a game that also can be played outdoors on sand.

The NCAA held the first men’s volleyball championship in 1970.

The sport has grown since then. There’s not a list of 239 colleges that compete in men’s volleyball.

Most are smaller schools in the Division III, NAIA and junior college ranks. Many are in the Northeast, although most of the power schools — Long Beach State, UC Irvine, UCLA and USC — are located in California.

American Volleyball Coaches Association polls consider all the scholarship volleyball programs, so you’ll see schools such as Lewis and McKendree in the same poll as UCLA and USC.

Only a few of the South Atlantic Conference schools have added men’s volleyball so far, so Catawba competes in the Men’s Independent Volleyball Association. The Indians have scheduled a wide varsity of opponents — with fourth-ranked Hawaii (9-1) topping the list. Hawaii’s only loss was to Stanford.

Bill Ferguson was hired as the first coach of Catawba’s program. He’s coached at the highest level. He’s coached the USC Trojan men and the Wake Forest women, among others. He also was the start-the-program coach at Carolina University in Winston-Salem.

Ferguson’s wife, Brenn, has been the head coach of Catawba women’s volleyball for three seasons. She guides the indoor team, which plays in the fall, as well as the beach volleyball team.

The men’s and women’s games are played with the same concepts and rules, but men’s volleyball is also different. As is the case with basketball, the men are taller and bigger and they jump higher.

The players getting Catawba men’s volleyball started range from graduate students, with a wealth of college experience, to freshmen. They come from near and far. One of them — Kekona Ulu — hails from Hawaii.

Graduate student Eli Zdonek, one of the top hitters, was an all-conference player last season at Emmanuel University in Georgia.

The other big hitter for Catawba has been 6-foot-6 graduate student Trevor Phillips. He was a very good player at Ball State University. Ball State is a volleyball power.

Freshman Max Adkisson is the libero and leads Catawba in digs.

Sophomore setter Kristian Smith has deep Catawba roots, as both of his parents were Catawba athletes.

Hawaii’s visit will provide a chance for volleyball fans to get introduced to the men’s game at Catawba. It will also be a chance to see the game played at a very lofty level by one of the nation’s best teams. The Rainbow Warriors are towering, with a roster full of 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-9 players and one who is listed at 6-foot-11.

The Indians hope to see a loud and packed gym on the 22nd. This will be the equivalent of Florida or Tennessee coming to take on Catawba in men’s basketball.