Preps | Volleyball takes center stage on Memorial weekend

Converting football turf to volleyball courts at the 27^th Emerald City Classic at the University of Washington

• May 25, 26 & 27 | Dempsey Indoor Arena & Alaska Airlines Arena | Free Admission

Final Four | NCAA Championships in Seattle/Tacoma: A Rare Event

2013 Women’s Volleyball Final Four will be just the 18^th D1 Championship, and the 4^th for women

[04.17.13 CORRECTION made: this will be the 18th NCAA Championship in Seattle/Tacoma, not the 19th]

When the 2013 D1 NCAA Volleyball Championship comes to Key Arena this December, it will be an opportunity more rare than those in Western Washington may think.

This will be just the 18^th NCAA D1 Championship ever held in Seattle/Tacoma, and just the fourth-ever for women.

6 of the previous 17 championships were all held on the University of Washington campus between 1949 and 1971. After a 13 year hiatus, Seattle/Tacoma saw its NCAA heyday, hosting 8 championships in 11 years, in men’s soccer and in men’s & women’s basketball. Each of those competitions were held in either the Kingdome or the Tacoma Dome.

The 1995 men’s basketball Final Four in the Kingdome was the last truly big NCAA event in our region.

Want your kids to see a national championship? Better not wait for the next ones to roll around …

VOLLEYBALL DOCUMENTARY UPDATE

“Court & Spark,” a one-hour volleyball documentary premiering during Seattle’s 2013 Final Four, is wrapping up production in the next few weeks, with shoots at the USA Training Center in Anaheim and at the 2013 Emerald City Classic at the University of Washington.

A preview video is now available, highlighting some of the sights and sounds of our location shoots with Courtney Thompson in Poland. Let us know what you think.

Basketball Tourney: Impressive. Volleyball Tourney: Even more so

As we celebrate the 40^th Anniversary of Title IX, a notice in today’s Seattle Times caught our eye.

A girls’ basketball tournament in Kirkland, WA—called Midsummer Nights Madness—starts July 10:

• Now in its 15^th season
• Teams from throughout the west, plus Canada and a team based in Germany
• Grown from 35 teams in 1997 to about 100 in 2012
• *1100 female athletes

Very impressive. And hats off to Madness founder Stan Lee and the dozens of volunteers who make something this big happen every year.

It’s another opportunity, however, to point out a fact rarely noted in the nation’s sports pages: More high school girls play volleyball in Washington state than any other sport [source: National Federation of High Schools 2010-11 Participation Survey]. [see: How popular is volleyball among high school girls?]

Action at the 2012 Emerald City Classic
-courtesy WVBA

In fact, volleyball is the most popular prep girls’ sport throughout the west, including Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Hawai’i, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming.

And—without taking anything away from basketball’s notable Midsummer Nights Madness event—the annual Emerald City Volleyball Classic at the University of Washington is mighty impressive in its own right:

• Now in its 26^th season
• Teams from throughout the west, plus Canada and Brazil
• Grown from 12 teams in 1976 to 201 in 2012
• 2200 female athletes

So … even more impressive. And too often overlooked, since the annual Classic is held over Memorial Day weekend, when it competes for media attention with a slew of other sporting events. Hats off to Dave Weitl and all his Emerald City Classic volunteers.

[Full disclosure: Jack Hamann, author of this post, was a member of the Washington Volleyball Academy’s Board of Directors from 2003-09; WVBA is the Emerald City Classic organizer]

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*according to Midsummer Nights Madness director Stan Lee, there are 94 teams and approximately 1100 athletes registered as of July 5. Lee says the Seattle Times was incorrectly told that there are 1800 athletes registered.

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