Things continue changing in the girls club volleyball world.
3STEP Sports has made sure of it.
And the changes are going to keep coming.
If you hadn’t known about 3STEP before the company from Massachusetts bought clubs like KiVA, Munciana, Academy and K2, well, if you’re in the club world, pay attention.
What’s more, currently you might play in either the USA Volleyball or AAU national championships.
In due time 3STEP will have a national championship, too, and said it will be open to anyone and everyone. An event series is also in the future.
3STEP calls itself “the nation’s largest and most impactful club and event operator.” Volleyball is the ninth sport for the 21-year-old company that also employs a similar strategy that first started with football and has added youth baseball, baskeball, wrestling, softball, field hockey, lacrosse and soccer.
3STEP founder and CEO David Geaslen said it’s pretty simple. 3STEP takes over from club owners “facilities, apparel, raising money, travel, website, marketing, everything that has nothing to do with the sport. You worry about the sport,” he said.
“So we’ve basically created an ecosystem where we can plug club operators and event operators into this system by buying them.”
Geaslen said 3STEP currently has 101 of what they call operators, or club directors/owners, in nine sports. And in our sport, that number is going to grow soon with announcements coming about 3STEP buying more big volleyball clubs. He wouldn’t say which.
There are 10 clubs in the 3STEP fold, including East Coast Power. Its former owner and director, Brian McCann, runs the volleyball division and, as a first-hand beneficiary, gets what Geaslen said.
“It really does give you some financial stability, because that risk is taken off your plate,” McCann said. “Essentially, what we want to do on the volleyball side of things is grow the game.
“I think some of the powers that be have made it difficult to come and play volleyball. You have to jump through all these hoops, insurance and this and that … we’ve tried to simplify that process and we’ve gone after some of the stronger clubs and we’re going to build out some really neat national events that will be open to everybody, whether you’re an AAU club, a JVA club or a USA club. Anybody can come to it. We self-insure everything so you don’t have to worry about those things, we make sure every single…
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