A Unique Idea: The Story of The American Volleyball Tournament

by Andrew Chesebro

Sixteen matches, 15 awards, eight teams, two days. This was the American Volleyball Tournament, a creation of American University Head Coach Barry Goldberg and the first tournament of its kind.

"Nobody had ever done anything like this," Coach Goldberg said. "Every other tournament across the country has four teams and each team plays three matches. For us to give out all of the awards that we did is unique and is something that is only done in international competitions. To include as many as eight teams and to have each team playing four matches, that is something completely unique."

The original idea for this tournament was thought up four years ago while Coach Goldberg was watching television. "I was sitting there and thinking to myself about how conferences like the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big 10 have challenges each year between their schools in certain sports. They do it in basketball, why not do it in volleyball too?"

The concept was simple. To create a tournament in which representatives from the Patriot League competed against another conference. The awards were included to honor those players who performed exceptionally well during the two-day event and make the tournament more unique.

"The awards that we gave out were an idea that I got from the international competitions," Coach Goldberg said. "They are based completely on statistics and there is no voting. This way we can accurately award those players who were the best in each category."

The awards encompassed every aspect of the game and included honoring the tournaments best receiver, server, digger, blocker, setter, hitter and scorer. Seven awards in total that would be determined by statistics so as to keep them fair and unbiased. In addition to the individual awards an All-Tournament team would also be selected and an MVP named.

With an idea of exactly what he wanted to put on, Coach Goldberg went the annual PL volleyball coaches meeting in Center Valley, Pa., to present the concept.

"When I first proposed the idea it was received very positively by the coaches," Coach Goldberg said. "I never heard any feedback from the league though so I put it on the backburner. The next year, when I showed up to the coaches meeting the director of the Patriot League, Carolyn Schlie Femovich, asked me where we were on the project. At that point I started putting the wheels in motion."

The first piece of business Coach Goldberg had to take care of was to find teams in the Patriot League to join his American team. "Finding teams in our league was easy. I called up my friends at Army and Navy and asked if they would like to be involved. Of course they said yes right away. The next step was finding teams from another league to play against."

Harvard, Penn and Cornell, all of the Ivy League, answered the call to play. "The Ivy League seemed like an obvious choice," Coach Goldberg said. "Both conferences pride themselves on maintaining high academic standards while also offering high levels of athletic competition, so it was a natural fit."

After three years, Barry's idea of putting on a two-day competition between two conferences seemed like it would finally happen. The awards were in place and the field of teams was set. At six teams the tournament would be very unique and an exciting opportunity for everyone involved. As the date approached though the logistics of the tournament became a bit more complicated.

"In January of this year Columbia called me and told me that they also wanted to play," Coach Goldberg said. "I said great, now we really have something going on here."

Lafayette was added from the Patriot League to balance out the field and the tournament was now an eight-team competition.

In a typical volleyball tournament, four teams play a round robin style tournament facing every other team once. Teams play one match the first or second day and two the other. Never before had an eight-team tournament been tried with teams playing two matches a day. A few quick decisions needed to be made as to how the tournament format would work.

"When this became an eight team tournament I had to call the other schools involved and ask if they were okay with playing two matches a day," Coach Goldberg said. "Everyone agreed and we were in business."

The tournament's final format had four rounds. The first three would be a round robin format with teams from each league facing three of the four teams from the opposite league. The fourth round would rank each league's teams based on the round robin play and pit the two first place teams against one another, the two second place teams against another and so on.

"With our new format we could objectively crown a champion," Coach Goldberg said. "Under normal circumstances it is difficult to determine who has won a tournament because teams finish with the same record. With our tournament we seeded each team for the last round and had tie-breaking criteria to eliminate any ties."

The last hurdle the tournament needed to overcome was to find a way to play all 16 matches in two days. To do this four time slots were scheduled each day, with every time slot having two matches.

So there it was, a completely unique tournament format with an awards procedure used overseas but unique to college volleyball in the United States. It was a completely new creation that in theory appeared plausible. But would it actually work?

"I think that the tournament went over better than we originally expected," Coach Goldberg said. "It is always fun to do something that nobody has done before and I think all the teams involved really enjoyed that. This was also a great opportunity for the kids from all the different schools to come together, meet and play against one another when normally we wouldn't see these schools from the other conference. Overall I think the weekend was a big hit."

The tournament was also a big hit with fans. Over the course of the two days nearly 1,000 spectators passed through AU's Bender Arena to cheer on their favorite team with signs and boisterous enthusiasm. A constant buzz created by American fans and those who made the journey to Washington, D.C., with their favorite teams filled the venue as everyone enjoyed great competition, on-court promotions and music between matches. "You have done a great job putting this together," one fan of an Ivy League team said. When compared to other tournaments that teams had recently been to the American Volleyball Tournament ranked among the best.

With a thumbs up from all eight teams and a thumbs up from fans, the American Volleyball Tournament was an overwhelming success.

"I hope we can do this again next year," Coach Goldberg said. "Everyone worked very hard to make this happen and that hard work paid off. I think that this type of tournament could be the future of college volleyball tournaments and I am very proud to be among the first group to pull this off."