By Aaron Hutton for VolleyballMag.com
There’s a good Vibe in Atlanta, more players have signed with the budding pro volleyball leagues, teams are making moves, and we visited with former Stanford great and Athletes Unlimited director of sport Cassidy Lichtman.
We’ll start with Pro Volleyball Federation news.
The Atlanta franchise, which took advantage of having AVP Atlanta in its backyard this past weekend, will be known as the Atlanta Vibe.
“We wanted a name that reflects our city,” Vibe owner Colleen Craig said.” In order to accomplish that, a city-wide naming contest was conducted, returning well over 1,000 submissions with one that stood out to us the most – the Atlanta Vibe.”
The announcement was made at the Atlantic Station, site of the AVP event, with two of the team’s celebrity investors on hand, Olympic great hurdler Edwin Moses and beach legend Sinjin Smith.
Atlanta also recently announced that coach Todd Dagenais has hired Brian Doyon, who was one of his assistants at UCF the past seven years.
The Vibe will be playing at Gas South Arena in the suburb of Duluth and will share the facility with the National Lacrosse League’s Georgia Swarm and the East Coast Hockey League’s Atlanta Gladiators.
The Columbus Fury has been busy. The franchise named David Paitson its CEO. He comes from the pro hockey world.
“I saw first-hand how this community took to the sport of hockey when it was in its infancy, and I fully expect the same to happen with women’s professional volleyball,” Paitson said.
The Fury also signed Gabby Blossom, the former Penn State setter who as a graduate transfer took San Diego to last year’s NCAA national semifinals, and former Ohio State outside Ashley Wenz.
“Being from Ohio, I’ve had the amazing opportunity to play high school and college volleyball here. Having left, I know Ohio really draws you back,” said Wenz, who played a season of beach at Arizona State.
“I’m extremely excited to continue to represent the town and state I love.”
Omaha last week announced it will be called the Supernovas.
Dallas was also introduced as one of the PVF franchises, but it won’t play until 2025.
PVF, which begins play next February, also has first-season franchises in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Orlando (team-name announcement coming later this month) and San Diego. One more team will play in 2024 with an announcement coming on that franchise soon.
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