OT: UAA's Stevens national V-ball player of the year

[tsull]

Impressive individual honor, national player of the year:

https://www.gnacsports.com/volleybal...r-of-the-year/

How did UAA do at the national tourney?

[Anchorage]

Man this is a fun story…UAA Volleyball. So they lost in the regionals that they were supposed to be hosting.

Taking us back to get proper perspective here…The Great Alaska Shootout was a November basketball tournament that brought men and women’s D1 teams to compete and the UAA teams were the only D2 teams. This was a huge deal for 30 years, games on ESPN, great for recruiting, packed house for those games. They lost the ESPN sponsorship around 2005 and 10 years later the tournament was scrapped.

A couple of the native corporations decided they want ti put money into bringing it back. They started this year with a mini-4 team tournament for women (not sure why the men weren’t included, hopefully next year) that they had been planning and had put money into. The games weren’t on ESPN but I think they got them on ESPN plus. So there is a massive community and athletic department investment in getting this back off the ground.

Then the volleyball team goes ballistic and is the top ranked team on the west coast and is eligible to host regionals. They also just days before had set a D2 record of 3800 fans at one of their games. But UAA had a scheduling conflict with the shootout set for that same weekend. I’m not sure why they couldn’t shift things around to accommodate both but apparently they couldn’t and UAA athletics hadn’t been very forthcoming on why that was (scared to piss off the native corporations and their major investment in the shootout?).

So after regionals and they get upset, the UAA volleyball team coach quits dur to this situation and as he said, not feeling supported by the athletics department. Many in the community were pissed that volleyball couldn’t host the tournament…until the UAA women crushed both D1 teams and won the tournament. And they became the talk of the town.

so I don’t know man but this whole situation has been a roller coaster ride. And I just want the men to be included in next years shootout 😂

But you are right, it’s a huge honor and achievement for Eve. Awesome job.

[tsull]

Man this is a fun story…UAA Volleyball. So they lost in the regionals that they were supposed to be hosting.

Taking us back to get proper perspective here…The Great Alaska Shootout was a November basketball tournament that brought men and women’s D1 teams to compete and the UAA teams were the only D2 teams. This was a huge deal for 30 years, games on ESPN, great for recruiting, packed house for those games. They lost the ESPN sponsorship around 2005 and 10 years later the tournament was scrapped.

A couple of the native corporations decided they want ti put money into bringing it back. They started this year with a mini-4 team tournament for women (not sure why the men weren’t included, hopefully next year) that they had been planning and had put money into. The games weren’t on ESPN but I think they got them on ESPN plus. So there is a massive community and athletic department investment in getting this back off the ground.

Then the volleyball team goes ballistic and is the top ranked team on the west coast and is eligible to host regionals. They also just days before had set a D2 record of 3800 fans at one of their games. But UAA had a scheduling conflict with the shootout set for that same weekend. I’m not sure why they couldn’t shift things around to accommodate both but apparently they couldn’t and UAA athletics hadn’t been very forthcoming on why that was (scared to piss off the native corporations and their major investment in the shootout?).

So after regionals and they get upset, the UAA volleyball team coach quits dur to this situation and as he said, not feeling supported by the athletics department. Many in the community were pissed that volleyball couldn’t host the tournament…until the UAA women crushed both D1 teams and won the tournament. And they became the talk of the town.

so I don’t know man but this whole situation has been a roller coaster ride. And I just want the men to be included in next years shootout 😂

But you are right, it’s a huge honor and achievement for Eve. Awesome job.

This is a classic example of athletic departments out-thinking themselves. Giving up a potential 4K volleyball crowd because they can't work around it is nearly as dumb as having to play D2 hoops at a Phoenix practice gym in front of 20 people against a team from New Mexico.