Cassidy Lichtman: We’re not there yet … the biggest volleyball push is yet to come

Former Stanford All-American and USA national-team player Cassidy Lichtman has an extensive volleyball resume. She played professionally for five years in Poland, Switzerland, Azerbaijan, France and China, and is on the USA Volleyball board of directors, Lichtman was also an assistant coach at Stanford when the Cardinal won the 2016 NCAA championship. She played in the first two Athletes Unlimited volleyball seasons and is now the AU director of volleyball. We asked her to write about the incredible upward trajectory that our sport is on and what she thinks the future holds:

By Cassidy Lichtman for VolleyballMag.com

I have spent my whole life in the volleyball world and there is no doubt that the momentum behind the sport is at an all time high. We are about to go into the biggest postseason ever in college volleyball, multiple professional leagues have developed and the youth side continues to grow at impressive rates.

And even with all of that activity, we’re not there yet.

The gap between volleyball’s popularity and its visibility is wider than any other sport. We aren’t trending like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese or showing up on SportsCenter regularly. We have built a giant silo but have yet to break out of it into the mainstream sports conversation.

So let’s take a look at where we’ve been and where we can go next.

Anyone who has stepped into a convention center for a club volleyball tournament should not be surprised by the surging popularity of the sport. At a time when youth sports participation is dropping, volleyball’s numbers continue to rise. After passing soccer and basketball years ago as the biggest team sport for girls in high school, volleyball is the only sport in the top ten at the high school level that has continued to grow in recent years. USA Volleyball saw a growth in membership of almost 10 percent in the 2022-2023 season, which was the largest percentage growth in 25 years.

Maybe the biggest development for volleyball over the last decade has been the emergence of the conference…