According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), of the 77,287 high school male volleyball players in the country, only 3.8% go on to play at the collegiate level. That’s low, especially for an active and growing sport across the country. So, how does a man get to be one of the 2,933 collegiate male volleyball players in that percentage?

Varsity Men’s Volleyball athlete John Becker ‘26 found a way.

Before his freshman year, Becker had no ambitions to play volleyball or even be an athlete. But during his freshman year, he decided to give volleyball a try.

“I had a lot of friends who played, and I was tall for being a freshman, but I was also really uncoordinated and really nonathletic,” Becker said. “Volleyball is a perfect entry sport for people who are really tall and really nonathletic. I started going with my friends and playing at Southridge Rec Center. We did weekend open gyms. I was terrible, but it was just fun to go.”

From there, Becker decided to get more involved with volleyball, joining the Freshman C-Team and joining a club team.

“[C-Team] was really fun because we were kind of in the back corner of the gym and got less organized attention,” Becker said. “It was just a really fun time learning skills and stuff.”

But as he progressed to varsity his sophomore year, Becker started to feel some burnout with balancing volleyball and schoolwork.

“We’d do morning practices at the start of the season, and after that, I was cooked–like, absolutely fried, sleeping in [AP US History], things like that,” Becker said.

Going into his junior and senior years, he began to set his sights on his athletic future at college. However, the collegiate athletic signing system is notoriously difficult to work through.

“I hated the recruiting process,” Becker said. “It’s a lot of sending emails and a lot of getting filmed. You have a lot of pressure going into out-of-state and in-state tournaments, to get film to prove to yourself, because when you practice and you’re good, you already know I’m good enough to do this. It just matters if you can do it in-game.”

Fortunately for him, Becker recently announced his commitment to Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio.

“It’s a big relief,” Becker said. “I don’t have to do any more of the junk emails.”

Over his career, volleyball has changed from its beginnings as a fun game to play with friends to an essential part of his life.

“Volleyball is such a social sport where, if you’re on a team and you love the people on your team, you’re gonna have a good time no matter what,” Becker said. “Seeing the results of a lot of hard work translate into placement and results has been really good.”