Professional Seashore
January 3, 2024
HERMOSA BEACH, California — In 2021, Volleyball World TV was looking for announcers for the Italian SuperLega to which it had not too long ago acquired the rights. The pool for such expertise isn’t the biggest or the deepest; uncommon is the person who can each converse eloquently whereas additionally being well-versed in a sport that has historically had little fanfare in the USA. So when Dustin Watten was charged with recruiting just a few, the checklist of qualities was, primarily: Who can put a sentence collectively whereas additionally maintaining with the very best high quality volleyball on the earth?
The selection was surprisingly straightforward: Matt Prosser.
The selection for Prosser to just accept was even simpler.
“After all,” he recalled telling Watten, “I’m drooling over right here.”
How Watten knew of Prosser’s commentating bona fides is a credit score to Prosser’s personal initiative. Each Watten and Prosser had competed for Lengthy Seashore State earlier than taking part in professionally abroad. Lengthy Seashore is among the few males’s indoor packages that televises its matches, and given its historical past as probably the most profitable within the nation, it will possibly command the viewers to take action. Prosser, like many program alum, beloved the truth that the varsity broadcasts its matches. Like many alum, he thought he would possibly have the ability to add to the product, particularly since he got here armed with a level in broadcast journalism from Lengthy Seashore State itself, even when he’d by no means truly used it. Prosser, nevertheless, took it one step additional: He truly did one thing about it.
“I simply known as up Lengthy Seashore State and requested if I may come again and do the colour commentary for the boys’s volleyball staff,” he stated. “Let me convey some technical facets to the printed.”
That was 2020, arguably the worst time to get into broadcasting sports activities, as sports activities, like a lot of the world, had been about to be shut down for the then-unforeseeable future. Nevertheless it was sufficient: Watten had been tuning into the broadcasts, listening to now-expert commentary from a person who as soon as made an NCAA last and was named All-American. If Volleyball World TV wanted a commentator, there have been few higher fitted to the job than Matt Prosser.
“The broadcasting checks an enormous field for me by way of being concerned within the sport,” he stated, after which he did the mathematics: At 45 years previous, he’d been concerned within the sport of volleyball, in by hook or by crook, for 32 years, starting within the yard along with his father. Now a 6-foot-7 absolutely grown grownup who could possibly be simply confused for a good finish, Prosser wasn’t all the time constructed because the sturdy athlete he grew to be.
“I wasn’t a bodily child, I wasn’t sturdy,” he stated. “I didn’t raise weights till I bought to school so I wasn’t into the bodily contact. As quickly as I used to be capable of focus that vitality and aggression on the ball, and have a staff, and have a web between us, that was the candy spot.”
As a lot as his timing for the launch of his commentating profession was poor, his timing for locating the sport of volleyball was divine. The AVP was in its heyday, placing on 25 tournaments a 12 months, the finals of which had been recurrently proven on nationwide TV. Males with names similar to Karch and Steffes and Sinjin and Stoklos and Hovland and Dodd had been dominating. Indoors, the USA males had gained back-to-back Olympic gold medals. It could be straightforward for a child in Southern California to really feel the pull of a sport exploding up and down the coast — and Prosser felt it.
He’d pore over Volleyball journal and Volleyball Month-to-month, chopping out photos of Sinjin Smith, Randy Stoklos and Ricci Luyties and put them on his wall. He didn’t let his hometown of Ventura, then principally devoid of volleyball, restrict his taking part in; he discovered a membership staff in San Diego, took a prolonged prepare journey, practiced with the staff for just a few weeks, after which rejoined them at tournaments. That staff gained a gold medal for his or her age group, and “it was round that sophomore, junior part of highschool that I knew I used to be going to have the ability to play volleyball previous highschool,” Prosser stated. “Due to that publicity from membership volleyball, I used to be capable of get recruited.”
He loved an amazing profession at Lengthy Seashore and put collectively a quick skilled profession indoors earlier than switching full-time to the seaside in 2003, which was kind of attainable then, because the AVP would run wherever from 9 to 18 skilled tournaments and the highest gamers would recurrently eclipse six figures in earnings. However that is Matt Prosser being mentioned. Like something, timing grew to become paramount.
In 2010, coming off the most effective season of his profession, Prosser had partnered with John Mayer, a younger lefty with a lethal serve and an off-the-cuff demeanor that belied his extraordinary presents. Of their third match, in Hermosa Seashore, they made the finals, logging wins over Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal and John Hyden and Sean Scott. They had been on the rise, little doubt about it.
The AVP was not.
The subsequent week, the gamers acquired a name: The AVP was bankrupt. Season canceled. Sorry.
That was a time of existential angst for the gamers. The worldwide gamers can be fantastic, because the FIVB was thriving, prize cash was booming, and sponsors had been nonetheless sturdy. However these on the AVP?
“It was crushing,” Mayer stated years in the past. “I used to be taking part in fairly properly. Bodily I used to be in my prime. I simply keep in mind being crushed and not sure of what to do. I can keep in mind going out the subsequent low season and never having any schedule and simply being on the market coaching and being a little bit purposeless and never having the identical drive. The seashores had been fairly empty, it was fairly exhausting to seek out video games. It was scary and there’s so many guys we misplaced, and possibly some indoor gamers would have transferred over however couldn’t.”
Mayer caught with it, ultimately profitable the AVP MVP and Finest Defensive Participant in 2015. Prosser saved one foot in whereas exploring extra secure profession paths. He tried his hand at industrial actual property, briefly launched a seaside membership in south Orange County, coached a highschool staff, bought into medical machine gross sales.
“I nonetheless dabbled in volleyball, nonetheless performed, nonetheless coached,” he stated. “Nevertheless it wasn’t the precedence.”
However the sport, even in probably the most turbulent of instances, by no means left Prosser completely. Even with it not being the precedence, he gained the one AVP of the 2011 season with Matt Olson and performed in not less than one skilled occasion yearly till 2018 — even by a testicular most cancers prognosis and three rounds of chemotherapy.
It was Eric Beranek, a younger, spunky, then 20-year-old defender who dragged Prosser onto the seaside, even with a chemotherapy port nonetheless lodged in his chest.
“I don’t know what I’m going to have the ability to provide you with,” Prosser informed Beranek. “I don’t know what I’m going to have the ability to do.”
In 2017, not a lot: They did not make it out of each qualifiers they performed, in Hermosa and Manhattan Seashore. However in 2018? Magic.
Prosser and Beranek gained 4 straight matches to qualify, upsetting second-seeded Paul Lotman and Derek Olson within the third spherical. Huge for Beranek, who was in simply the third principal draw of his burgeoning profession. Poetic for Prosser, whose second profession principal draw got here in Manhattan Seashore in 2004.
“That was an enormous second in my life and in my being,” he stated. “We had been the final match to complete, and it was one other outpouring of emotion for me. Being an athlete and focusing in your physique a lot, while you get informed you could have most cancers and you must do chemotherapy, that’s an enormous bomb being dropped on you and also you don’t know what to anticipate. Going by that chapter and that problem and adversity, to return again to a stage the place we certified, that was a massively necessary second for me and my household and Eric, and it was actually a pleasure to be part of.
“To me I proved to myself I may undergo what I had gone by and nonetheless play at a spot the place I used to be proud of my efficiency. I’ll all the time be thankful for that.”
A number of weeks later, he’d win the Hermosa Seashore Labor Day four-man, pocketing extra in money than anybody would that weekend on the AVP in Chicago.
“These two wins for me had been a great way to shut that chapter of extremely aggressive volleyball and to proceed ahead,” he stated.
It wouldn’t be for 2 extra years that he’d re-enter the volleyball world as a commentator, and yet another after that he’d signal on with Volleyball TV. One 12 months after that, the AVP would request his bona fides on the mic as properly.
“The broadcasting piece is so cool to be part of as a result of once I was youthful, I didn’t have any entry to this volleyball, watching the world tour, watching skilled volleyball from Italy or the VNL, I didn’t see any of that stuff,” he stated. “For a tiny bit, it was NBC Common. Previous to 2010, it was exhausting to look at volleyball outdoors of the Olympics or the summer season AVP when it was televised again within the heyday. It’s been actually enjoyable and rewarding to be again concerned on the broadcasting aspect. I’m sitting watching this volleyball from Italy and it’s a tremendous stage, or doing the Seashore Professional Tour from India or the World Championships from Rome or Mexico, simply the streaming platform is a tremendous expertise that may entry hundreds of thousands of individuals from across the globe. I’m lucky to be part of it, and it’s rewarding and a whole lot of enjoyable.
“I can relate to what the gamers are going by in sure moments and now I can share broadcasting which is the place I supply the most important worth to a viewer. It additionally permits me to finish the circle on the similar time.”
