Four months ago, Haleigh Washington and Jordyn Poulter were competing at the 2024 Olympics in the women’s volleyball gold medal match.
Now, the silver medalists are in Salt Lake City to start a new chapter of the sport with a new professional women’s volleyball league: League One Volleyball Pro — or LOVB (pronounced “love”) Pro for short.
“It’s really exciting. You go through this really trying and difficult journey of getting another medal, of ending up in a gold medal match, and then you’re doing a brand new thing and you’re reevaluating your goals and you’re having a reset and you’re trying to learn and grow in a new space,” Washington told the Deseret News.
Washington and Poulter headline a LOVB Salt Lake roster that also features former BYU players Mary Lake and Roni Jones-Perry and former University of Utah player Dani Drews.
The Salt Lake squad is one of six teams preparing for the new league’s inaugural season, which starts in January.
Both Washington and Poulter, who are two of the league’s founding athletes and received equity in the league, said there’s been a learning curve transitioning from their Olympic experience to building a new team in a brand new league. But Washington sees some similarities between the two.
“It’s — in one vein — very similar because it’s just like pursuing an Olympic dream in that you have goals, you have training, you have all these things that you’re doing, and it’s the same way with LOVB. But here it’s kind of new, and so, it’s also exciting because it’s fresh and you’re trailblazing,” Washington said.
LOVB Pro will make some of the world’s top volleyball players more visible in the U.S. With nine of the 12 players from Team USA’s Paris roster playing in LOVB, fans won’t have to wait every four years to watch these Olympians compete.
“I think for a lot of us, not only those us who are on the national team in the Olympics, but for all of us, we’ve played abroad our entire careers, and so it feels like a nice homecoming to be starting this inaugural league in the States, kind of leading into the LA 2028 games,” Poulter said.
Professional volleyball in the U.S.
Until recently, women who wanted to play volleyball professionally had to play overseas.
The U.S. hasn’t had a great track record with women’s professional volleyball leagues. Multiple attempts, like the Major League Volleyball and the United States Professional Volleyball League, folded after just a few seasons.
Two other leagues have launched in the U.S. since 2021. Athletes Unlimited Volleyball finished its fourth season this year, while Pro Volleyball Federation launched in January.
Athletes Unlimited has just a five-week season, compared to LOVB’s 14 weeks. It also adds unique twists to the sport, such as changing team rosters every week and using a scoring system for individual players and teams in a match.
Prior to the launch of LOVB, both Washington and Poulter were on teams in Italy.
While playing internationally allows athletes to experience new cultures and travel around the world, “it’s tough” to sacrifice family time for a volleyball career, Washington said.
“It’s really hard. You’re away from family for eight to 10 months,” she said. “You don’t get Christmas and you don’t get New Year’s with your family and you don’t have Thanksgiving with your family.”
Still, Washington was skeptical at first when she was presented with the opportunity to help launch LOVB Pro. What sold her on it was the league’s promise to be community-oriented.
“We incorporate youth sports as well as professional sports. There’s a pipeline — youth girls athletes can see what it is to be a professional athlete right in their own home gyms, and I loved that idea. I loved that connection piece,” Washington said.
As Washington’s description makes clear, LOVB Pro isn’t your typical professional sports league.
All six teams are owned by LOVB, a youth volleyball organization with clubs across the country, rather than individual team owners or ownership groups. But the league has attracted celebrity investors, including Lindsey Vonn and Kevin Durant, according to ESPN.
The league’s pro teams utilize the facilities already in place for LOVB’s club teams in the area. This allows LOVB’s youth players to see the professional volleyball opportunities that are now becoming available.
LOVB Salt Lake trains at Club V in Salt Lake City on a new court customized with their logo.
LOVB Pro is building on its community focus by giving its athletes a holiday break to go home to their families, and Washington is excited to open Christmas presents at home for the first time in five years.
“I’m very family-oriented so to have not have those holidays and those moments was really challenging, and you’re very isolated. For a lot of girls, they’re in spaces where they don’t speak the language and they’re all by themselves, and that can be really tough to kind of adjust to, especially if you don’t have other Americans nearby.”
What LOVB means for women’s sports
Despite the uncertainty surrounding American professional leagues, volleyball is a popular sport at the youth level in the United States.
In the 2023-24 school year, 16,849 U.S. high schools had girls volleyball teams, and 479,125 girls played on a high school volleyball team, according to The National Federation of State High School Associations. More schools and players participated in volleyball than high school baseball.
And those numbers don’t even include volleyball that’s played outside of schools at the club level. LOVB alone has 58 clubs, more than 1,500 teams and 17,300-plus players in the U.S.
Utah has roughly 80 youth volleyball clubs and each of those clubs have one to three teams per age group for girls 12-18, according to LOVB Salt Lake.
Volleyball is popular among sports fans, too, especially in recent years.
In 2023, 92,003 fans showed up to watch the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Huskers play the University of Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks in the Huskers’ football stadium. It set the world record for the most-attended women’s sporting event.
Women’s sports in the U.S. in general are experiencing a surge in popularity — just take a look at WNBA rookie phenom Caitlin Clark, who was named Time’s Athlete of the Year.
LOVB will look to capitalize on that momentum this season.
“The ambition is that this league will be the next major league in the United States, and I feel really confident with the launch pad that we have right now. I feel grateful to be a female athlete that is still competing kind of in this changing of the tide a little bit, and hopefully, I think each of us just want to leave our mark in the legacy that we helped inspire the next generation,” Poulter said.
Both Washington and Poulter said they would consider the inaugural season successful if the league sees an increase in visibility — through viewership, attendance and social media — over the course of the season. The league’s media rights deal with ESPN, which will broadcast 10 LOVB matches and stream 18 matches on ESPN+, should help with that.
Washington recognizes that as a new league they will not start with the same viewership and ticket sale numbers that more established leagues will have. It will also differ from other American women’s sports leagues by not having a male counterpart.
“I think we’re a very unique women’s sport in the United States in the sense that we don’t have a male counterpart,” Washington said. “There really is no men’s volleyball league, so we’re really a unique situation, a unique setup. I think if we can just slowly move forward, that’ll be successful.”
LOVB Salt Lake plays its first match on the road in Atlanta on Jan. 8. The team will play its home opener and make its Utah debut on Jan. 22 at Salt Lake Community College’s Bruin Arena.
When asked what her pitch to fans would be to attend the home opener, Washington shared two words: “Why not?”
“Why not come to the home opener? Why not invest in this season of women’s volleyball and get excited about it? Because here’s my thing: let’s say League One ends up being a complete failure. LOVB was this great idea but the execution was lacking, and we totally dive out in three years. What have you lost by investing now?” Washington said. “Why wouldn’t you want to take the opportunity to be a part of something great that could grow into becoming this new top brand, this new top league?”
Tickets for LOVB Salt Lake can be purchased on the team’s website.
