The Hive Sports

By: Joe Oliver

January 22, 2025 – The popularity of women’s sports has grown exponentially over the past couple of decades! Now up for the Beehive State, the newest professional sports team is: women’s volleyball. League One Volleyball, commonly referred to as LOVB (Love), is one of three new professional women’s volleyball leagues to take the U.S. by storm! LOVB teams do not have traditional team names, and instead compete as “LOVB” followed by the city name. LOVB Salt Lake is part of this new league. 

LOVB was organized in 2020. In 2021, LOVB announced the creation of a professional league, LOVB Pro. On March 9, 2023 the first two cities were announced: Atlanta, Georgia, and Houston, Texas. June 5th Salt Lake City was named as one of the six inaugural cities, which also includes: Austin, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin, and Omaha, Nebraska. In all, League One Volleyball comprises 58 clubs in 66 locations. There are more than 1,500 teams with over 17,300 youth athletes. The professional season began 

LOVB launched it’s first week of matches on January 8th in Atlanta. Since then, LOVB Salt Lake had a record of 1 – 3, putting them in last (6th) place. They began their home opener with a tough loss in the first set; falling to Houston 22 – 25. The SLCC Lifetime Center Bruins Arena was packed and proved to be key in keeping the team pumped all night! It was an official SOLD OUT crowd with 3,006 spectators. Salt Lake won the following 3 sets: 25 – 15; 26 – 24; 25 – 19.

With this win, Salt Lake moved into 2nd place overall with a 2-2 record. Skylar Fields was named player of the match. She racked up 17 kills, 7 digs, and 1 block.

Dani Drews (20 points) who played at the University of Utah, and Roni Jones-Perry (15 points), formerly of BYU, both stated how thrilled they were to play in front of friends and family again. Jones-Perry has played the last 6 years professionally, overseas. Mary Lake, also formerly of BYU stardom, rounds out the list of Utah-based players on Salt Lake’s squad. 

Houston’s scoring was led by Jess Mruzik, who had 15 points. Mruzik is fresh off winning the 2024 D1 Volleyball National Championship with Penn State, as well as earning MVP honors!

BYU women’s volleyball team was on hand, signing autographs prior to the match. BYU’s head coach Heather Olmstead began the evening with a ceremonial first serve. And after the match, the line to get autographs from there was a line of hundreds of young girls and fans seeking autographs and selfies with the Salt Lake players. It was a wonderful fan experience to engage this way! 

Next up, Salt Lake heads to Atlanta to play LOVB Atlanta on Jan. 31 in a rematch of LOVB’s first-ever game, which Salt Lake won.

Photos by: Joe Oliver

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*History of Women’s Pro Volleyball 1895- Volleyball was invented in Holyoke, MA. By the 1990’s, volleyball was the second-largest participated sport in the United States. More than 42 million people played, the game included indoor and outdoor competitions.

1900- A special ball was designed and created for the unique sport.

1900- YMCA introduced volleyball to Canada, and the Southern Hemisphere.

1907- At the Playground of America convention Volleyball was presented as one of the most popular sports to date.

1916- Within the Philippines, an offensive style of passing the ball in a high trajectory in order to be struck by another player (the set and spike) was invented.

1916- The YMCA invited The NCAA to aid in editing the rules and in promoting the sport. Volleyball was then added to school and college physical education programs.

1917- The amount of points in the game of volleyball was changed from twenty-one to fifteen points.

1922- The first YMCA national championship was held in Brooklyn, NY.

1928- The United States Volleyball Association (USA Volleyball) was formed. The first U.S. Open was held.

1930- The very first two-man beach volleyball game was played.

1934- The approval and recognition of national volleyball referees was made in order to keep everything fair.

1949- The U.S. Volleyball Association began sponsoring the women’s open title.

1964- Volleyball was added to the Olympic Games.

1970- Mary Jo Peppler of the United State’s was voted the most outstanding volleyball player in the world at the International Games in Bulgaria.

1975- National team member and also Olympian, Debbie Green became volleyball’s youngest All-American at the age of sixteen.

1975- Mary Jo Peppler was also named the International Volleyball Association’s Coach of the Year.

1986- The Women’s Professional Volleyball Association (WPVA) was created.

1987- The first Women’s Professional Volleyball event was held in Newport Beach, CA.

2000- The Nebraska Cornhuskers beat Wisconsin 3-2 for the NCAA Volleyball crown.

2001- The Stanford Cardinals earned a record fifth NCAA women’s volleyball title by defeating Long Beach State.

2004- Holly McPeak captured her 68th pro beach volleyball title, setting a new women’s career record for tournament wins.

2005- Stanford’s Ogonna Nnamani won the Honda-Broderick Cup as the NCAA woman athlete of the year. An outside hitter on the volleyball team and she was a member of the Olympic women’s volleyball team in Athens.

2005- 2004 Olympic gold medallists Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh won their second Association of Volleyball Professionals Open women’s title and the 2005 overall women’s championship together.

* http://www.dailynexus.com/story_images/2002-11-18/bs17no02wvball.jpg