Inside revived SEC Volleyball Tournament’s bid to be ‘premier volleyball event nationally’ – The Battalion

Texas A&M volleyball fans Paul and Shawna Ricks had a weekend to remember.

The first leg of their family trip took them from their home in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to College Station for A&M football’s game against Samford at Kyle Field. Then, it was off to Enmarket Arena in Savannah, Georgia, to watch the Aggies in the Allstate Southeastern Conference Volleyball Tournament.

“We follow the girls on the volleyball team,” Shawna said before A&M’s semifinal matchup against Texas. “We love them all. We’re so proud of how great they’ve done this season, and we just want to celebrate them.”

Though A&M fell short in the semifinals, the opportunity to see the Aggies play live was cherished by one member of the Ricks family especially — 14-year-old Brooklyn Ricks, a high school volleyball player herself. She was especially excited for the opportunity to see A&M senior opposite hitter Logan Lednicky.

“It ended up being more than we could ever ask for,” Paul said. “She asked Logan, when she stopped by, ‘What would you give [as] advice?’ And Logan took the time to talk to her about what to do, how to stay focused. So as a parent, it was really cool.”

The Ricks’ daughter wasn’t the only young volleyball player looking up to the stars of the show. Of the fans in attendance, plenty sported shirts supporting local — or non-local — volleyball clubs and plenty of players from several teams spent time in the crowd taking pictures and signing autographs with fans before and after their matches.

But as the dust settled with the 1-seed Kentucky Wildcats taking home the tournament title, the SEC’s revival of its volleyball tournament — played for the first time in 20 years after being axed in 2005 — sparked significant questions.

Namely, is the tournament good for the SEC — and is it good for the sport of volleyball — in the same way it was good for fans like the Ricks family?

A divided postseason

Unlike most non-football NCAA-sponsored team sports, women’s volleyball’s postseason is divided. 

Of the 31 conferences that sponsor Division I women’s volleyball, 27 of them hold some sort of postseason tournament to decide their automatic qualifier for the NCAA Tournament. Most of these mid-major events are held on campus sites and only invite the top teams from the conference. The Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten and Big 12 all do not have a conference tournament.

Volleyball, on a power conference level, doesn’t have the neutral-site, big-event feel that men’s and women’s basketball and diamond sports tournaments deliver in the postseason. The SEC wants to change that with all 16 of its teams.

“We want this tournament to evolve into the premier volleyball event nationally, something fans look forward to every year,” SEC Assistant Commissioner for Competition and Student-Athlete Engagement Misty Brown said via email before the tournament. “ … Over time, we envision this growing into a must-see postseason showcase that expands our brand, attracts new fans to the sport, and becomes another signature championship in the SEC.”

Brown, a Savannah native, said she was excited to bring an SEC Championship event to a partner city like Savannah with a three-year deal and stressed the importance of fan engagement. 

One person in particular was excited to help with that last point — on the mic.

A growing game

When the SEC reached out to DJ Jay Shalé, the international emcee, artist and performer jumped at the chance to work the event.

The crowd — 3,880 at the tournament final between Texas and Kentucky — may not have compared to the crowds at Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta Hawks games she’s worked,  along with her own tours, but the tournament held a special significance to her.

A former collegiate athlete herself — Shalé bowled at Texas Southern — the Germany native described herself as a huge women’s sports fan and was excited to play her own small role in the sport’s growth.

“Volleyball is the next major sport stateside,” Shalé said. “And to be a part of the early wave of all that getting picked up, I think is incredibly awesome. Like I said, all the women are incredibly talented, and they deserve a platform like this.”

From her stand next to the crowd, 20 or so yards from the baseline of the court, Shalé kept a wide variety of spectators — neutral fans, folks cheering for eliminated teams, kids there to see high-level volleyball like the Ricks’ daughter Brooklyn and, of course, a healthy dose of Kentucky’s Big Blue Nation — entertained throughout every single match through songs, mini-games and plenty of interaction with the crowd.

“I felt like there wasn’t really any expectation, because they haven’t been here in 20 years, so it was very important for me to set that bar high,” Shalé said. “So that way, people know like, ‘Next year, what are the dates? You need to come.’ … It was just important for me to be like ‘Okay, let me make sure I’m doing my part and making sure that people had a great time over these five days, and are inclined to want to come back when it comes back for future years.”

And with Brown and the SEC pitching the event as the nation’s premier volleyball showcase, at times — it’s a 16-team tournament, after all — the environment did live up to the hype.

Take, for example, the tournament final. Kentucky rallied back to reverse sweep 3-seed Texas, 3-2, in an all-time classic of a title match. The crowd wouldn’t set the highest attendance mark for either team, but you wouldn’t know it from how loud chants of “Go Big Blue” and “Texas! Fight!” battled throughout the evening.

“It was a great environment, very competitive,” Kentucky junior libero Molly Tuozzo said. “There was a lot of fans who weren’t even from Kentucky, but I heard of a couple of families from all over the place that just came to support us, and we’re fun to watch. So I think it’s just a really cool environment, lots of little teams and little girls that look up to us.”

That’s easy to say if you’re the tournament champion. But other schools agreed. 

Two narratives dominated this year’s SEC Tournament’s early stages: the rise of 15-seed Vanderbilt and 14-seed Ole Miss. After lackluster conference slates, each double-digit seed went on a run into the quarterfinals of the tournament, before losing to 2-seed A&M and 3-seed Texas.

And, even after losing the final to Kentucky in heartbreaking fashion, Texas coach Jerritt Elliott couldn’t help but acknowledge the impact he feels the tournament will have on volleyball itself.

“You’re starting to see the explosion of this,” Elliott said. “It’s the fastest-growing women’s sport in the country right now, and there’s a really good [return on ad spend] that’s happening on this. You’re starting to see really good TV ratings from it. … But this is kind of happening for these incredible women that are playing at the high level they’re playing.”

Future questions

While it’s clear that SEC coaches, players and fans largely view the tournament as a success, there is one elephant left in the room: How does the SEC fare in this year’s NCAA Tournament? 

Five SEC schools made the Big Dance, and the two top dogs, Kentucky and Texas, each earned No. 1 seeds.

The conference’s team closest to the bubble — 6-seed Missouri — lost its first matchup in Savannah, so there isn’t much to tell about how the SEC Tournament affects a team’s bubble chances. 

But other questions remain. Does playing high-level competition just before Thanksgiving prepare a team better for the rest of the postseason, or does playing three matches in three days set up a team poorly for the NCAA Tournament?

A&M, despite its semifinal loss to Texas, seems to prefer the former.

“It’s only gonna get tougher from here,” Lednicky said after the loss to Texas. “I think we needed just that, honestly. We got pushed a little bit in [non-conference] against two really good teams. I think [the Texas match was] exactly what we needed heading into the postseason for the NCAA Tournament.”

So what are the other power conferences thinking? 

“Big Ten coaches, at least in the past, have had very different opinions about a conference tournament,” Lincoln Journal-Star sports columnist Amie Just, who covers Nebraska volleyball, the sport’s powerhouse program, said. “I’m just curious to know whatever happens with the SEC, if that changes people’s opinions, or if it strengthens how they feel about potentially adding it to the Big Ten.”

As the SEC and coaches like Elliott stress the event’s television value, Just can’t help but point out that all matches — including the tournament final — were limited to the SEC Network and not a main ESPN channel.

“One of the things we talk about when we put up this hypothetical question of ‘What would it look like if the Big Ten had a conference tournament?” Just said. “One of the first things people point to is what the TV situation would look like. And now that we see what the SEC has for its tournament, I think it would be fair to say that some people are disappointed.”

But tucked away in a press conference room at Enmarket Arena in Savannah, with a title shirt on and a championship trophy on the table in front of him, Kentucky coach Craig Skinner said the answer is clear: The SEC Tournament is the future of collegiate volleyball.

“Ninety percent of the eyeballs of volleyball world were on this match tonight, and then probably thousands more that don’t really watch volleyball because of it,” Skinner said after the tournament final. “ … We played 18 matches, but it wasn’t a fair schedule between all the teams, so the only way to determine a true conference champion was to have a tournament. And it’s a grind. I mean, it’s tough. These guys are worn out, but we have 10 days before the NCAA Tournament. … Every conference in America, if they don’t have a tournament, is thinking about it now.”