By now, we all know that college volleyball is more popular than ever before. During the 2024 NCAA volleyball season, ESPN even garnered record viewership numbers (most-consumed NCAA women’s volleyball record ever with 1.3 billion minutes), underscoring for sure that fandom of the sport is on the rise in the country. But who would have thought that it would also be a problem in the collegiate level that forces the USA Volleyball to adjust its operations?
The 2025 FIVB Women’s U21 World Championship will kick off in Surabaya, Indonesia, on Wednesday and USA Volleyball hopes to win its first trophy at the competition. However, it seems like the hopes to do so got a serious issue to deal with even before the tourney begins, courtesy of the NCAA.
On August 3, Avid Volleyball hit X to share details of the USA Volleyball team that has been named for the upcoming competition. “USAVolleyball has announced the 12 athletes selected to represent at the U21 World Championship this week in Indonesia,” the X update notes, before going ahead to highlight rather startling information. “Due to conflict with the NCAA, this is a U19 team being sent,” Avid Volleyball points out how the USA Volleyball had to mitigate the NCAA’s operations in order to have its representation at the FIVB U21 World Championship.
While the details of the scheduling conflict weren’t made public, we assume that with the NCAA season starting soon, the country’s apex collegiate volleyball body didn’t want to put too much pressure on its biggest stars. The 2025 season will commence less than a week after the FIVB U21 tournament comes to an end, and it’s only natural for the NCAA to want the athletes to be in peak condition to handle the hectic schedule, irrespective of how the USA Volleyball fares at the international competition.
𝐔𝐒𝐀 𝐔𝟐𝟏 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐌
USAVolleyball has announced the 12 athletes selected to represent at the U21 World Championship this week in Indonesia
Due to conflict with the NCAA, this is a U19 team being sent. pic.twitter.com/ULn2lZ3Mhz
— Avid (@AvidVolley) August 3, 2025
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