Men’s Vol­ley­ball Added to Bethel Ath­let­ics

 MISHAWAKA—Ear­lier this year, the Bethel Uni­ver­sity Ath­let­ics De­part­ment an­nounced that they will be adding men’s vol­ley­ball to their slate of ath­letic teams. This brings the school’s to­tal to 25 var­sity sports. The most re­cent ad­di­tions were the bowl­ing teams and the swim­ming and div­ing teams in 2018. While it will be a new team for Bethel Uni­ver­sity, men’s vol­ley­ball has al­ready been one of the quick­est grow­ing sports in the coun­try. Over the past decade, it has be­come more rel­e­vant at the col­le­giate level. The NAIA added men’s vol­ley­ball as an of­fi­cial cham­pi­onship sport at the start of the 2018-19 sea­son. 

“It’s an emerg­ing sport in the NAIA,” Ath­letic Di­rec­tor Tony Na­tali said. “It’ll be an ex­cit­ing sport that we can add to our spring sports. From what I’ve seen from many schools that have men’s vol­ley­ball, it has great at­ten­dance and can be re­ally ex­cit­ing for both our stu­dent-ath­letes and our stu­dents.” 

With the open­ing of the Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Cen­ter this past month, it made more space avail­able for other ath­letic teams to be able to use the Weikamp Ath­letic Cen­ter for prac­tice. It also fur­thers Bethel Uni­ver­si­ty’s GROW cam­paign. The “G” in GROW stands for “Game On!,” and the ad­di­tion of men’s vol­ley­ball will al­low the uni­ver­sity to open its doors to more and more ath­letes. An­other fac­tor that went into adding men’s vol­ley­ball was the re­cruit­ing ad­van­tages that it gives both vol­ley­ball teams. 

“Al­ready hav­ing wom­en’s vol­ley­ball, and them hav­ing won a na­tional ti­tle this year, adding men’s vol­ley­ball is a good com­ple­ment to each other,” Na­tali said. “When talk­ing to Coach Weiss, she said that when she re­cruits, a com­mon ques­tion that comes up is, ‘do you have men’s vol­ley­ball?’ So, to be able to have both sports com­ple­mented at that level will be huge for our vol­ley­ball teams.” 

Al­though men’s vol­ley­ball has been an­nounced, it will not be an of­fi­cial sport on cam­pus un­til 2022. Bethel will start re­cruit­ing and look­ing for a coach within the com­ing year. 

“This year, men’s vol­ley­ball will be­gin as a club sport for those who are on cam­pus and are in­ter­ested in play­ing,” Na­tali said. “We will be­gin to look for a coach this year, and once we get that named, we will be­gin com­pet­ing and re­cruit­ing. We plan to get the full sport un­der­way dur­ing the fall of 2022.” 

For more in­for­ma­tion on men’s vol­ley­ball an­nounce­ments go to www.bupi­lots.com.