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[quote=Anonymous][quote=FPYCparent]I appreciate some of the context.  Thanks!

Prior to 2015, what other CHRVA clubs produced teams that were consistently competitive?  I've read hints here that suggest Virginia Juniors teams might have been competitive, but were they neck-and-neck with Metro?  How did MD-based clubs fare in the "before times?"  I recognize that the overall popularity of volleyball has boomed since 2020 ... or maybe 2015, so there may not have been as many clubs/teams in that era.

Without taking too much away from the primary topic, I'd also be interested in the stories of clubs have emerged/merged/whatever over time.  I think I understand that an iteration of EC Power was acquired and moved to The St. James, but then some parts may have since splintered off (Mojo?).  Are there similar stories for other CHRVA clubs that may have contributed the current state with Metro and Paramount seemingly on top in nearly every age group?[/quote]
The only two local clubs I am aware of that still exist and go back as far as Metro are MVSA and Columbia, although I think Columbia is similar to Metro in that it's gone through some various iterations and changes of leadership. From what I can find MVSA volleyball was founded in 1991 as part of the broader Montgomery Village Sports Association which has existed since 1971. Columbia Volleyball Club was founded in 1985. There are probably more clubs with long histories that I am not aware of.

From what I can find, most of the clubs we talk about today were founded much more recently:
Paramount - 2016
MDJRs - 2003
VA Juniors - 2011
VA Elite - 2005
MOCO - 2015
MOJO - 2011

I think VA Juniors and Vienna Elite are both good examples of local clubs that used to be pretty strong (in the last 10 years or so) that have not been able to maintain the same level of competitiveness, although VA Juniors had a pretty decent season last year.  I am not fully versed in the earlier history so I'm not sure if there was ever a club that made a meaningful challenge to Metro's dominance like Paramount is starting to.

The St James/EC Power/MOJO saga from a few years ago primarily starts with a now defunct club called Arlington Elite.  Arlington Elite was a Virginia club that was pretty successful for a while [url]https://blog.sportsrecruits.com/2016/10/13/arlington-elite-forges-player-driven-club-assisted-recruiting-program-with-sportsrecruits/[/url]. When the St James facility was completed in 2018, rather than start their volleyball club from the ground up, they acquired Arlington Elite which meant most of the coaches and teams became part of the St James club in the 2019-20 season. The stories I have heard are that the leadership and some of the coaches from Arlington Elite clashed pretty early with the St James leadership and were looking for an exit strategy. Around the same, 3 Step Sports, which is a VC backed company that is buying up clubs in multiple sports nationwide, had acquired EC Power in 2019. 3 Step has been aggressively buying up clubs around the country and the list of clubs under their umbrella today is pretty crazy (Munciana, Kiva, Tribe, and many more well known clubs). [url]https://threestep.com/our-sports/volleyball/[/url]. As part of the 3 Step expansion strategy, EC Power (who had a branch in Delaware) was looking to establish a presence in the DMV in the 2020 timeframe and they ended up luring some of the dissatisfied, former Arlington Elite, staff from the St James to coach the new EC Power teams in DC. In the second year of EC Power DC, they wanted to create more teams for younger players and ended up coming to some kind of arrangement with MOJO in Mclean who was pretty strong at younger age groups and fit well geographically. MOJO was recast as EC Power although they continued to do some things under the banner of MOJO.  When the whole EC Power DC organization fell apart just ahead of the 2022-23 season, MOJO hurriedly reorganized themselves back into an independent club taking with them some of the former EC Power coaches while others went to the newly formed DC branch of the Renaissance volleyball club that ultimately only lasted for that single season.

This discussion has sent me down a bit of an interweb rabbit hole. I think the first organized club volleyball nationally that sort of resembled the junior club volleyball we know today was AAU in the 1970s. I found an interesting article talking about the first AAU Volleyball Nationals championships being held in Catonsville, MD in 1974 [url]https://www.aausports.org/volleyball/news/article?id=3827[/url]. There is also an interesting discussion of the history of volleyball in the US at this site [url]https://ncva.com/info/general-info/history-of-volleyball/[/url]. That timeline shows that AAU and early predecessors to USAV sort of worked together organizing "Junior Olympic" volleyball through the 70s and 80s with USAV organizing the juniors program more formally in the mid 80s. From what I can tell, there were regions going back to at least the 1970s, but this was primarily intended to create an infrastructure for developing volleyball players to compete internationally. [url]https://www.zippia.com/usa-volleyball-careers-724653/history/[/url]. Women's volleyball as a collegiate sport started in 1969 with the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_I_women%27s_volleyball_tournament[/url]. Women's volleyball became an NCAA sport in 1981 as part of NCAA's expansion in many women's sports. Men's indoor volleyball started as an NCAA sport in 1970.

This CHRVA document from 2002 gives some interesting stats about participation at the time [url]http://www.chrvajuniors.org/juniors/docs/JuniorsInfo.pdf[/url] They note that in 2002 CHRVA was composed of approximately 35 clubs, 225+ teams for ages 10 to 18, and more than 2000 players. The current CHRVA club directory shows around 130 clubs.

Perhaps there is a book idea here documenting the history of club volleyball in the United States? I'm sure it would be a bestseller  :D 
[/quote]

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