When Maryland Japanese Shore volleyball participant Shanti Ramdeen and her teammates — together with another student-athletes — had been summoned to the varsity’s athletic advanced for an announcement final week, nobody was sure what was about to occur.
Ramdeen, a junior center from Austin, Texas, stated they had been simply instructed to indicate up.
“Once we acquired there, we had been fairly confused as to what was happening,” she stated. “When the information broke, there have been gasps. I do know a variety of my teammates had been … everyone simply acquired loud. My teammates had been actually excited.”
Certainly one of her teammates, she stated, set free an audible — and loud — “Wow!”
The UMES program, which can start play within the Northeast Convention within the 2025-26 season, was considered one of two public universities to announce the addition of males’s volleyball inside a one-week span. Northern Kentucky adopted. The Norse additionally will start enjoying in 2025-26, and this marked the primary time in additional than twenty years that public universities added males’s volleyball.
UMES made additional historical past by changing into the primary Division I traditionally Black faculty (HBCU) so as to add males’s volleyball.
Wade Garard was at UMES to listen to the gasps and the “wows” from the assembled college students for the announcement. He known as it the good a part of the occasion. And Garard’s group, First Level Volleyball, performed no small half in serving to each of the brand new applications get off the bottom.
When First Level Volleyball launched seven years in the past, its acknowledged mission was to develop alternatives within the sport for males in any respect ranges. Since First Level’s inception in 2016, 10 states have sanctioned boys highschool volleyball, and 40 faculty males’s applications have been began, with UMES and NKU being the most recent.
Serving to develop the sport for minority males has been one other key a part of First Level’s mission. To that finish, in 2019, First Level gave $600,000 and USA Volleyball $400,000 for the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Convention so as to add six males’s volleyball applications: Central State, Edward Waters, Fort Valley State, Benedict, Kentucky State and Morehouse.
All are traditionally Black faculties.
Maryland Japanese Shore obtained a $250,000 grant: $100,000 from USA Volleyball and $150,000 from First Level. Donors reminiscent of East Coast Volleyball additionally pitched in to make the UMES program occur.
Northern Kentucky, in the meantime, obtained a complete of $100,000 from First Level, USA Volleyball, East Coast and different donors. The bigger quantity UMES obtained, stated Garard, co-founder and CEO of first level, included help companies that profit the varsity’s ladies’s staff as properly.
Ramdeen, whose Hawks certified for the MEAC match this weekend, is worked up concerning the potentialities of what volleyball can don’t just for UMES however for HBCUs throughout the board.
“I do know lots of people who really feel — not essentially misplaced — however I really feel like an HBCU brings a special sort of setting, particularly for minorities,” she stated. “And I really feel prefer it’s nice to introduce volleyball into that as properly as a result of I do know a variety of males’s volleyball gamers that I’m buddies with that needed to go to an HBCU however had been by no means actually given that chance as a result of there isn’t that many HBCU volleyball applications.
“It’s going to open up new alternatives for everyone of each colour. It’s nice, and I really feel superb to be part of it, truthfully.”
Tara Owens, vp of athletics and recreation at UMES, had first-hand information of the joy and alternative males’s volleyball may carry to a campus. She was the athletic director at Central State when the SIAC made males’s volleyball a part of its menu.
She had a front-row seat as Central State captured the inaugural convention title.
“It was an ideal alternative for us (at Central State) to offer college students an introduction to a extremely popular sport and provides our college students who didn’t play one other sport a chance,” stated Owens, who got here to UMES in September 2022. “Central State, the SIAC, I assumed it was a daring transfer then, and we benefitted from it enormously.
“That was one thing that was an exquisite expertise for the campus as a complete.”
Owens introduced the concept of a males’s volleyball program together with her to Maryland Japanese Shore.
“Due to my expertise at Central State College previous to coming to the College of Maryland Japanese Shore, I introduced males’s volleyball as much as my president (Heidi M. Anderson) and I shared together with her that I assumed it might be an ideal alternative for us to reinforce our athletic program on the lads’s facet,” Owens stated.
St. Francis (PA) males’s coach Mike Rumbaugh, who’s getting into his twenty sixth season with the Purple Flash, was happy with the addition of UMES to the NEC and with what it may imply for HBCUs down the highway.
“I’m actually hoping that extra MEAC members may look so as to add males’s volleyball and the NEC will present them a spot to compete,” Rumbaugh instructed Volleyball Journal in an e mail. “The time is true for extra development. I can’t wait to see who the subsequent college is so as to add.”
The Northeast Convention, which had its inaugural season in 2023, included St. Francis (Pa.), Daemen, Lengthy Island U, Sacred Coronary heart, St. Francis Brooklyn, Merrimack, Fairleigh Dickinson and D’Youville. However Merrimack and Sacred Coronary heart not too long ago introduced they are going to be leaving the convention, so the addition of UMES was welcomed.
“It’s nice to see extra development within the D-I ranks with each the additions of Northern Kentucky and Maryland Japanese Shore,” Rumbaugh stated. “I like that the NEC took the daring step a 12 months in the past when it determined so as to add males’s volleyball as a convention sport.
“With assist from First Level, the NEC helped the final three D-I universities that added males’s volleyball get off to sturdy begins. As members within the NEC are ready for the NCAA bid, the thrilling information about Maryland Japanese Shore becoming a member of the NEC couldn’t have come at a greater time.”
Noreen Morris, commissioner of the Northeast Convention, echoed Rumbaugh’s sentiments in a press release to VolleyballMag.com:
“The Northeast Convention proudly enters its second 12 months of sponsoring males’s volleyball, and we’re totally dedicated to the expansion of the game. Since 2020, we have now welcomed 4 new NEC males’s volleyball applications, and the forthcoming addition of UMES within the 2025-26 season heightens our pleasure much more.
“Particular because of Wade Garard and First Level Volleyball Basis for his or her continued help and monetary funding in advancing males’s volleyball on the collegiate stage.”
Owens stated she is comfortable for her program to be becoming a member of the NEC. In the long run, nonetheless, she hopes to see the MEAC sponsor males’s volleyball.
“As (Anderson) stated, we’re path blazers in some ways with this transfer,” Owens stated. “Though I imagine it’s a unbelievable transfer for UMES, I actually hope I can provide some constructive suggestions to our convention as a result of I imagine many extra HBCUs can have a stage of curiosity, and I’m comfortable to be the primary.
“However I feel in some unspecified time in the future we’ll have a large number of faculties that take part. … The extent of variety it brings, the joy it brings to a campus, these are the issues I might be sharing with my colleagues. … We’ll begin off competing within the NEC, however I’m absolutely hoping that in some unspecified time in the future it might be a (MEAC) sponsor.”
Northern Kentucky, in the meantime, had been seeking to broaden its athletic choices. Christina Roybal, vp and director of athletics for NKU, stated the varsity was exploring practically 20 choices for extra sports activities.
Six had been chosen, and males’s volleyball was amongst them.
“Males’s volleyball made a variety of sense, one, as a result of we have now a facility that’s solely for volleyball,” Roybal instructed Volleyball Journal. “… Two, we knew that it was one of many quickest rising sports activities — if not the quickest rising boys sport — within the nation, and the recognition in Kentucky and Ohio, we heard — anecdotally in addition to statistically — that nice data.
“It made a variety of sense for us so as to add this system to provide highschool college students within the area a chance to take part on the Division I stage near dwelling.”
Roybal stated the varsity is in energetic discussions with the MIVA about becoming a member of the convention and stated Northern Kentucky plans to use for membership.
As with UMES, the information of the addition of males’s volleyball was properly obtained on the Highland Heights campus, particularly with the ladies’s program. The Norse ladies play within the Horizon League.
“They’re excited,” Roybal stated. “… Liz Hart is our head coach on the ladies’s facet. She was very excited. She actively stated, ‘I feel this can be a superb alternative for NKU.’ They discover the joy that’s round volleyball year-round. Now we are able to take pleasure in volleyball in each seasons.”
Ramdeen will graduate in spring of 2025. She stated she may stay at UMES for grad college, however there’s a probability she’s going to go elsewhere and received’t be on campus when the lads’s volleyball staff performs its historic first match.
Regardless, Ramdeen stated she might be within the stands.
“Both manner I’m undoubtedly going to make it some extent to return out right here as a result of it’s enormous,” she stated, “particularly this being the primary HBCU Division I volleyball program. I like males’s volleyball, too. It’s simply thrilling to be round.”
