NCAA grants women’s volleyball one-year waiver to add five extra August practice days

Because of a changing calendar, NCAA Division I volleyball teams can start practice five days earlier than expected.

From the AVCA and NCAA:

“The NCAA Division I Committee for Legislative Relief approved a blanket waiver to permit member institutions to begin practice sessions in women’s volleyball 22 days before the first scheduled regular-season intercollegiate contest.”

Such a move has been a long time coming, but it’s just for one year with an eye on expanding it and making it permanent.

“The blanket waiver provides one-time short-term relief to allow for additional discussion and review of a future legislative solution,” it added in the news release.

The first playing date is August 30, 2024. Last season, the season began on Friday, August 25. Practices began August 8 last year and will again this season for teams playing their first matches on August 30.

Creighton coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth is in the first year of her term as the AVCA president. 

“I think it’s a health and safety issue,” Bernthal Booth said. “We need to have time to ease our player into the season and we have such a short runway you’d be balancing so many things you need to teach but not wanting to wear them out. So these extra five days will allow us, hopefully, to do it in a healthier way.”

AVCA executive director Jaime Gordon explained how the legislation came about.

“There was a change coming out of COVID, a proposal by the Big West, to simplify how to calculate the preseason, and there were some unintended consquences with that formula because they calculated from your match date, when the old calculations were based on September first,” Gordon said.

“So as the calendar shifted, especially in this year, where you have the first permissible date of competition as August 30, ultimately teams were losing anywhere from four to eight days of practice relative to the old calculations. The AVCA and coaches started sharing this when it first came out, saying that it was going to be a problem and fortunately we were able to go through the right processes and have the right committees and provide the right information.”

The change to which he referred occurred on August 1, 2022, and as the AVCA said in its release, “was not intended to decrease the number of preseason practice days in any sport, but in practice, it resulted in a significant reduction in preseason practice opportunities for a majority of Division I women’s volleyball teams.”

Gordon, the 20-year volleyball coach at Morehead State, doubled up as school’s athletic director from 2019-23 before going to the AVCA last July 1 to replace Kathy DeBoer.

“The committe on legislative relief saw the unintended consequences and granted a one-year waiver. Now what we need to do is fix for years coming forward what’s the right system for preseason.”

Volleyball has never been allowed the summer preparation time that football gets and unlike basketball, for example, has a short window to prepare for season openers. A common refrain among coaches in 2021, when the fall season was moved to the spring because of COVID, was they appreciated not jumping from a short August practice period right into the season. 

“If the NCAA keeps giving us five extra days of preseason per year, in about five years we’ll have the same length as basketball,” Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield said. “At that point maybe we’ll be able to get summer access like so many other sports have. 

“But I’m glad we are inch-worming our way forward on this.”

Bernthal Booth agreed, saying “I would like a four-week summer access. I don’t want an eight-week summer  access, as some are, but the student-athletes I think are isupportive of four weeks.

Some coaches, for that reason, have argued that women’s volleyball should be a winter and/or spring sport.

“As we look to figure out the solution to this and what is the right system, what has to be considered first and foremost is the health and safety of the athletes,” Gordon said, “so that they can have an opportunity to acclimatize and compete at a high level.

“And it’s all sports that have these significant games at the beginning of the year now. Football is doing it, we’re doing it, basketball is doing it. But we have a shorter runway to be able to prepare our athletes. That has to be No. 1, which is do we have the time to get the athletes ready?

“The second piece is we need to manage competitive equity because you have schools  that start classes at way different times. Institutions in the Southeast may be starting class as early as the second week of August, so that means their practice opportunities without classes are fewer than a school in the Northeast or one out West that’s on the quarter system and isn’t starting until September. So they have nothing but preseason opportunities to practice without class.”

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