Jamie Davis’s last day on the job as the CEO of USA Volleyball is Monday.
His replacement will be announced this week.
Interestingly, after Davis announced he would not continue with USAV, the opportunity arose for him to take the same job with USA Water Polo. So he’ll moving from the courts to the pool in October.
Davis, 58, took over at USA Volleyball after the 2016 Rio Olympics, in January 2017, replacing Doug Beal. We caught up with Davis last week:
VBM: Thoughts about it as you wrap up?
Davis: I’m extremely proud of what the team has been able to accomplish over the last eight years. When I look back at the organization and I look at it now, I think it’s in a much healthier place and on really solid footing and I’m hopeful the next CEO will be able to build on this foundation to take it to even greater heights.
Our membership went from 339,000 members in 2016 to 435,000 members this past membership season. That’s up just over 30 percent. Over the two (Olympic) quads we won four golds, one silver and one bronze, we’re in the healthiest financial shape we’ve been in, we weathered COVID and came out stronger.
And, when you look at volleyball, the sport itself, in the United States, the sport is just booming. It’s just healthy across the board, the growth of the sport is continuing, we’ve got three pro leagues that are now going to be in the United States when LOVB launches in January as the third.
I’m just really proud of the work the whole team has done. It’s not me. It’s the whole team and I’m really proud of what we’ve been able accomplish.
VBM: You referenced COVID. That was a time when you had to do layoffs and firings and really pare back. That had to be hard.
Davis: COVID was the hardest thing I’ve had to address in my entire professional career. We did everything we could to not do what you just mentioned, to not have to lay off or furlough employees. We did it with complete transparency.
What we did when COVID hit was we started monitoring our cash flow. It was all about cash flow at that point. Every week we would update the team on how we were doing on cash flow, and we were telling them, these are the things that we’re trying to keep and if this doesn’t happen, these are the consequences that might have we didn’t. No one knew what COVID was at that time, so we were hoping to be able to still get some of our championships off…
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