HERMOSA BEACH, CALIFORNIA — Jon Alvarez’s professors on the College of Denver’s Daniels School of Enterprise needed to have been bored with it. Each single time they assigned Alvarez to jot down a marketing strategy, he’d come again with the identical two concepts: “It was both a volley bar or Volleyball Life,” he stated, greater than three many years later, laughing.
Each of these plans learn as a prescient concepts now, with volleyball, be it indoors or seaside or grass, exploding across the nation. Nebraska is promoting out soccer stadiums. The Pottstown Rumble’s individuals jumped yet one more 250 groups, as much as a staggering 2,650 for a single weekend. The NCAA Seashore Volleyball Championships are setting viewership data yearly. Final 12 months’s FIVB Seashore Volleyball World Championships did the identical.
However within the ’90s? In Texas?
Volleyball?
Coming from a man?
Suffice it to say, individuals had questions.
Regardless of these questions and odd appears to be like, Alvarez did the identical factor he’s achieved since 1993, when he scrawled a brand on a chunk of paper that, 14 years later, would change into a picture seen by 5 million guests on a month-to-month foundation at VolleyballLife.com: “I held true to my beliefs.”
It took greater than a decade for Alvarez to take one in every of his many enterprise plans, and that hand-drawn brand, and convey it to life. In 2007, nonetheless residing in Texas and one of many higher gamers within the Dallas space, Alvarez alas launched Volleyball Life, his match software program that will remedy each match director’s issues after which some.
Downside was, no person needed it.
Why would they pay him for a service they may do themselves with easy pen and paper? This was an period earlier than Instagram or TikTok. The NCAA had but to take a shot on seaside volleyball as an rising sport, and no faculty coaches, subsequently, wanted to know what juniors have been profitable what tournaments. The dad and mom, by extension, didn’t thoughts of individuals they didn’t know across the nation have been conscious of their child profitable the native match. It didn’t actually matter.
But.
“Everybody was nonetheless afraid of expertise,” he stated.
However he held true, reminding administrators and anyone who would hear that he had a product that would change grassroots volleyball across the nation. An honest participant, although by his personal admission not an awesome one, Alvarez moved to California shortly after Donald Solar purchased the AVP out of chapter in 2010, reviving the game as an expert endeavor. To some, this appeared, on the floor, that Alvarez was taking a real crack at turning into an AVP participant.
“After I moved out right here, individuals have been like ‘Why are you transferring out to California, you’re not that good!’ I knew that,” Alvarez stated. “I wasn’t even profitable tournaments in Dallas. Why would I win tournaments right here? It was about making the connections and rising my information of the game.”
Whereas he by no means did make a essential draw, upon transferring west to Huntington Seashore, he shortly discovered himself in practices on the Pier with Ty Tramblie and his coach, Gary Schreiber, and whomever Tramblie was partnering with on the time. He received to know the opposite regulars — Casey Patterson and Jake Gibb, Ryan Doherty and Ty Loomis, Mike Brunsting and Chase Frishman, Taylor Crabb and Trevor Crabb.
And Ed Ratledge.
Ratledge was one thing of a unicorn then, a veteran AVP skilled who leveraged his resume as a participant to launch a seaside volleyball membership, VolleyOC, which he ran off Newland Road in Huntington Seashore. Because the variety of juniors boomed, and his tournaments swelled in measurement and complexity, he figured it won’t damage to dump a few of his administrative duties to a expertise during which scores might be up to date, swimming pools seeded, playoff brackets set, and schedules maintained all in just a few straightforward clicks from an more and more technologically savvy technology of gamers.
“You’ve all the time been speaking about this and I want one thing proper now,” Ratledge advised Alvarez in 2017. “Should you construct it, I’ll use it.”
“I’ll construct it,” Alvarez stated, “and much more.”
Slowly at first, after which seemingly , extra match administrators started switching from pen and paper or BracketPal and turning to Alvarez and Volleyball Life. Simply as he promised Ratledge he would, he constructed it — and an entire lot extra.
Now, while you log onto Volleyball Life, yow will discover nearly any seaside volleyball match within the nation, be it juniors or adults, grass or seaside, semi-professional or strictly leisure. You’ll find rankings and determine probably the most gifted juniors within the nation. School coaches like it. Dad and mom like it as a result of the school coaches like it. It has reached a degree that, if match administrators will not be operating their tournaments through Volleyball Life, it’s nearly a disservice to the juniors who might be utilizing it as a software to get recruited. It makes it exponentially simpler, to an incalculable diploma, for coaches at, say, USC and UCLA to find the abilities of a Sarah Wooden, a 15-year-old from Glen Mills, Pennsylvania who’s already one of the crucial coveted recruits within the nation.
“We’re simply attempting to make every little thing simpler,” Alvarez stated. “We’re attempting to make it simpler for school coaches. There’s loads of information pushed stuff that’s cool to do and enjoyable to do and it helps the game on the whole.
“The dad and mom have been our largest supporters as a result of all of the tournaments are in a single place, their women are getting free profiles, now we’re doing a bunch of stuff with the AVCA, faculty coaches are on our system every single day. It’s all free for the juniors. We need to contact every little thing volleyball.”
And that, on the core, is Alvarez’s chief mission: “What it’s, is volleyball individuals doing cool stuff for volleyball.”
Seemingly everybody has seen. From 2022-2023, Volleyball Life grew by greater than 70 % when it comes to quantity hosted on its web site. Greater than 3,000 occasions have been run by its software program. 4 of the 5 main sanctioning our bodies use Volleyball Life, together with USA Volleyball. The quintet of tournaments Alvarez labels the Huge 5 — Fuds, the biannual fours match in Fort Walton Seashore, Florida; the Motherlode, a seaside match held on Labor Day weekend in Aspen, Colorado; the Pottstown Rumble, a grass colossus in Pottstown, Pennsylvania; the Waupaca Boatride, a grass and seaside bucket lister in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; and Seaside, the can’t-miss seaside volleyball competition in Seaside, Oregon — have all migrated to Volleyball Life, bringing their tens of hundreds of groups with them.
“Waupaca and Pottstown are hovering round 1,900, 2,000 groups. The second 12 months we did it, Pottstown grew to 2,400. This 12 months, 2,650. They grew by one other 250 groups. It’s insane. Waupaca, identical factor,” Alvarez stated. “They have been round 1,900 or 2,000. They needed to reduce theirs off as a result of they didn’t have the court docket house. They did a little bit rearranging they usually had 2,654 this 12 months. They’re each superb occasions. Seaside was within the 1,600, 1,700 vary. Final 12 months we hit 1,800. This 12 months we hit over 2,200. It’s superb to see the expansion. I don’t know the way they did it earlier than computer systems.”
He hasn’t ever actually needed to hassle with that notion: He’s been cooking this up since 1993. All through the expansion, he’s by no means overlooked his preliminary imaginative and prescient: volleyball individuals doing cool stuff for volleyball. Which is why everybody he has employed, from contractors to full-time workers, have a background of some types in volleyball.
“I all the time needed to make an affect on the game,” he stated. “I knew I wasn’t going to make it as a participant.”
Higher: He could make an affect on nearly each single participant within the nation who will use his software program.
“We’re getting to some extent now the place now we have 5 or 6 years of knowledge on gamers,” Alvarez stated. “It actually can embody the lifetime of a volleyball participant. That’s why it’s referred to as Volleyball Life.”