While California — and justifiably so — is known as the sport’s hotbed that has churned out so many great volleyball players over the years, we must continue not to sleep on the Land of Lincoln when it comes to the youth boys side of things.
A look at the 2023 VolleyballMag.com Boys Fab 50 proves the state of Illinois, particularly the Chicago suburbs, continues to up the ante and crank out quality players that go on to play at significant NCAA Division I-II programs.
On the heels of having seven Illinois-based selections in 2022, this year 12 players from Illinois grace the Fab 50 list, which highlights the top 50 boys senior-age youth players in the nation as voted on by an elite panel of NCAA Division I-II coaches. VolleyballMag.com has no involvement in the voting process beyond sending out the ballot and tabulating the final results.
The longest-running boys volleyball list in the country under the auspices of the 47-year-old Volleyball Magazine/VolleyballMag.com brand, the Boys Fab 50 takes into consideration a player’s overall skill level and is not exclusive to his high school, club or USA Volleyball prowess. Our annual boys high school All-American awards will be released this summer.
Drilling down deeper into that Illinois dozen, 11 different Chicago city-limit and suburban high schools are represented, along with seven different clubs (Ultimate leading the way with three Fab 50 picks) and nine different college inbound player recipients (Ball State and Loyola-Chicago each have two Chicago-area signees).
Of course, California continues to be California with 22 Boys Fab 50 selections. No surprise there.
When it comes to college on this year’s list and what typically is a precursor to our VolleyballMag.com men’s college recruiting class rankings in the fall, coach John Hawks’ Loyola-Chicago Ramblers head the list with eight Fab 50 selections, followed by UCLA and Lewis with five each, and Pepperdine, USC, Hawai’i and George Mason with four each. Sixteen Division I-II programs had at least one Fab 50 selection.
Interesting this time around was voting for who the top player in the Class of 2023 is, which yielded no runaway winner, but two clear-cut choices with a decent voting gap after that.
UC Santa Barbara-bound George Bruening (Corona del Mar for high school and Balboa Bay for club out of Southern California) is the top choice, edging USC signee Wes Smith (6-10 middle…
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