College | Volleyball fans ask: where was the media?

So tells us, dear readers: How would it benefit Seattle-area media if they paid more attention to volleyball?

Match point, Washington vs. Stanford
-Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann

The Volleyblog Seattle inbox was a bit stuffed this Thanksgiving.

Wednesday night, 8,646 fans witnessed Washington volleyball’s exhilarating upset of previously-undefeated, top-ranked Stanford. When those fans finally arrived home, many switched on the TV, hoping to see video highlights of the big win and historic crowd—the largest crowd in Washington volleyball history and the biggest attendance of any match in the nation this year.

But there were no local video highlights. Not a single local television station sent a camera or reporter to the match.

Thursday morning, many of those same fans sifted through the huge Thanksgiving newspaper on their kitchen table. Only one daily paper, the Seattle Times, sent a reporter to the match. But Terry Wood’s story was both brief (one skinny column) and buried (page 9). There were no photos.

And that, on Turkey Day, prompted several Volleyblog Seattle readers to wipe the cranberry sauce from their fingers and head for their keyboards:

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The local media need to take it seriously. You probably won't say it, but I will: there's a tremendous amount of sexism in Seattle Times, PI and local TV sports editorial decision making. They need to be called out on it, and Seattle, of all places, should not be willing to meekly tolerate it.

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As for the rest of the media, you are missing out on another great season by a team that will be good for many seasons to come. Please show some respect.

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Another mediocre football season with numerous articles and not a single one on this great team. SEXISM DEFINED!

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Don't think it's sexism. It's lack of respect for volleyball because the newspapers think women's basketball is a bigger deal -- even when the fans disagree!

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I agree that the sports media shows systemic sexism and that even accounting for the bias towards covering higher revenue sports under represents the accomplishments of female athletes. When a current National Player of the Year like Krista Vansant in a sport with the popularity of women's volleyball gets the miniscule coverage she's received this year, you gotta say something's fishy.

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We at Volleyblog Seattle would like to add our two cents. After that, we’re going to ask you to take a minute to do something yourself.

First, a couple of numbers:

Washington's Krista Vansant
-Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann

• For most of the past decade, women’s volleyball has attracted larger average crowds than any sport at the University of Washington other than football and men’s basketball.
• Wednesday’s home attendance of 8,646—an early match on a rainy weeknight at the start of a four-day holiday when most UW students were not in school and many fans were heading to Grandma’s house—was larger than any UW men’s or women’s basketball home game all last season. The previous season, only one men’s home game beat that total, by a mere 100 fans. UW women’s basketball has never drawn a home crowd that large in its entire history.
• Since 2004, the only other University of Washington sports teams producing such consistently dominant win/loss records are women’s and men’s rowing. Volleyball has steadily been a top ten national power, tallying more postseason tournament appearances and postseason wins than any other UW sport over than span. In the past ten years, volleyball has the most All-Conference and All-Americans of any UW sport, while dozens of its athletes have gone on to international professional careers, many of them lucrative. Volleyball alumni over the past decade include players who are now assistant coaches at major programs, plus two Olympians, Courtney Thompson and Tama Miyashiro.
• Seattle has hosted just one major NCAA D1 team sport championship in the last two decades—women’s volleyball. Last December, every seat in Key Arena was occupied on both nights of the Final Four, even when Washington failed to advance to the championship match.
• In the State of Washington, more girls play high school volleyball than any other girls’ high school sport. More than basketball. More than soccer. More than softball.
• Around the globe, volleyball is the second most popular sport (behind soccer) in huge swaths of the planet. Many of the sport’s biggest stars are Americans playing abroad.

So, why can’t volleyball generate more interest from Seattle-area media? Why, for example, would the Seattle Times run an extended front-Sports-page profile of a talented UW sophomore women’s basketball player during volleyball season (before basketball even started), but provide no equivalent coverage all this season of Washington senior Krista Vansant, the reigning National Player of the Year? Why has it been a decade since local television stations sent photographers to UW home matches? Where are the radio talk shows, the sports commentators, the region’s other media?

We at Volleyblog Seattle have plenty of mainstream media experience, including a decade reporting for KING-TV, another decade for CNN, and dozens of assignments for newspapers and magazines, including the Seattle Times, with whom Volleyblog Seattle is a grateful news partner. With that background, we know this much to be true:

• Most sports editors would love to cover volleyball. In fact, they’d love to cover many more sports than they do. If they had their druthers, their sports coverage would be far more extensive with many more reporters and photographers.
• Unfortunately, we in the media began offering our content for free (over the Internet) just as mainstream media revenue—already slipping—collapsed during the 2008 recession. Newsroom staffs, including sports, are now bare-bones. Once-extensive coverage of prep sports, for example, has all but disappeared.
• For journalists, there are always more great stories than resources and space to cover them. In fact, the essence of good journalism is applying both clear data and experienced instinct to decide what to cover and what to ignore. It isn’t always easy, but it comes with the job.
• In Seattle, no reputable sports department would survive without decent coverage of football, both the Seahawks and Pac-12. Likewise, the Seattle Mariners require an understandable commitment of resources. That leaves a whole lot of other sports scrambling for the occasional spotlight.
• Often, readers and viewers are ahead of media when it comes to recognizing emerging and waning sports. Many Seattle media were slow to embrace the Seattle Sounders and MLS, even as the team was packing NFL-sized crowds in an NFL stadium. Likewise, most Seattle media continue to give disproportionate coverage to basketball, despite their own reports of its declining popularity at all levels. Other reports have documented significant downward interest in tennis, golf and auto sports.

Kathy DeBoer, Executive Director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association, is often asked whether volleyball’s inability to sustain media attention is evidence of sports department sexism. DeBoer points out that volleyball is the only American sport played by men and women where women are demonstrably dominant. Only a handful of colleges field men’s volleyball teams, while thousands of colleges compete—and offer scholarships—in women’s volleyball. Coaches of top women’s volleyball teams are paid far more than those who coach men.

Washington's Lianna Sybeldon attacks against Stanford's Inky Ajanaku
-Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann

We know several sports journalists who are surprised to learn how sophisticated modern volleyball has become. Systems are complicated, strategies are complex, nothing like the PE and picnic jungle ball most sportswriters and sportscasters once knew. Some have noticed that we may have already passed a tipping point: America’s best women athletes are increasingly choosing volleyball over basketball and soccer.

And yet, those same sports journalists admit that they struggle to master the nuances of today’s volleyball. It takes time and effort with any sport to learn enough to explain just why one team won or lost, or why a team that should have won didn’t, or why a player’s performance was more exceptional than expected. It’s far easier to pass judgment on games you played yourself growing up, and few sports journalists played real volleyball.

Here, then, is the bottom line: sports media will pay more attention to volleyball if that attention serves their own benefit. In our view, we’ve reached that point in the Pacific Northwest. Wednesday’s crowd of 8,646 included more UW students than we might have expected, considering most were headed home for Thanksgiving. Far more revealing, however, was the huge number of young girls in attendance, many not yet high school age. They held signs, they painted their faces. They came with family, came with friends. They shrieked when Krista Vansant and Kaleigh Nelson were introduced. They screamed BOOM! whenever Cassie Strickland served. They oohed and ahhed when Melanie Wade or Lianna Sybeldon slammed a ball past Inky Ajanaku. These kids--and their parents--know their volleyball.

And that, dear fellow media, is the future. No one expects that you’ll suddenly fill the front page with volleyball, especially when the Seahawks are playing San Francisco, the Huskies and Cougars are preparing for the Apple Cup and the Sounders are on the verge of their first MLS title. But those young fans—and the others who were part of the biggest Alaska Airlines Arena crowd in any sport the past two seasons—will eagerly watch your broadcasts or buy your paper or like your Facebook page if you stay ahead, not behind, the volleyball curve.

Washington volleyball fans
-Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann

Now, dear readers, it’s your turn.

We promise you that sports editors in our region already know how Volleyblog Seattle feels. So do the folks at the University of Washington Athletic Department. Frankly, this is what they expect from us, and our influence with them is not all that great.

A few of you, however, took a moment yesterday to initiate this discussion. We now invite the rest of you to join in. Send us a sentence or a concise paragraph with this specific point in mind: How would it benefit Seattle-area media if they paid more attention to volleyball? Feel free to elaborate on a point we’ve already made, or add new ones on your own.

If we hear from you, we’ll combine excerpts of your comments into an open memo to our fellow sports journalists in the region. What they do with it is up to them, but it will certainly have more effect if you tell them why it’s in THEIR interest to pay more attention.

Finally, Alaska Airlines Arena will host four more matches this season. Three other teams—to be announced Sunday night—will join the Huskies for the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament next week. The following week, whether or not Washington advances, Alaska Airlines Arena will host the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight. We guarantee that local media will be watching to see whether another 8,000 fans have enough interest to attend any or all of those contests.