[Mick]

Why is it that Stanford MVB's historical results (2 national championships, 5 final fours) pale so dramatically compared to WVB (9 national championships, 23 final fours). It seems as if both programs would be recruiting from the same pool so to speak, and there's far more depth of competition on the women's side. Is there a simple answer or a number of factors that have resulted in WVB being so dominant while MVB has often struggled at the top level? Is it a matter of resources which are now being addressed with this fundraising effort?

I don't know the actual answer, but I can give you an educated guess.  Here's a few reasons:

1)  High school girls' volleyball is more closely akin to football than it is to boys' volleyball, in terms of participation.  About 10x the number of girls than boys play in high school.  

2)  The number of girls' competitive clubs dwarve those of boys.  Which leads to surplus of recruitable high school women athletes.

3)  I was peeking over coach Kosty's shoulder at the Junior Olympics one year.  He had the Volleyball Magazine's Top 50 attached to his clipboard.  Four of the names were highlighted.  I asked "Are those the players you really want?"  He replied "Those are the four who can get into Stanford."  I don't think the leading academic lights generally pursue volleyball at the highest level.  And if they do, they have incredible options.

4)  Volleyball players don't really have a chance to earn big money in the pros.  So they may gravitate to programs where they won't have to work as hard, or pay as much.  Recruited volleyball players get a one-quarter scholarship.  That's it.  But the following schools have competitive men's varsity programs, many of which require far less of a time commitment than Stanford: Harvard, Princeton, MIT, NYU, USC, UCLA, UCI, UCSB, UCSD, and UC Santa Cruz.  And as a kicker, Cal has two club teams, one of which plays excellent ball.  They actually recruit at junior tournaments with a pretty compelling sell: an education virtually as strong as Stanford/Harvard/Princeton/MIT but you commit to volleyball 12 hours a week instead of 40.  Since it wasn't a varsity program, my son scrimmaged with that Cal team as a junior in high school.  The setter had been recruited to UCLA and UCSB, but chose to go to Cal and made a very compelling argument to my son as to why he should go to Cal versus Princeton.

Three-time All American libero Gage Worsley (UHawaii) was from Campolindo HS in Moraga, and played in a competitive league. Coach Shibuya probably saw him play 30-40 sets a year for a few years. I knew Worsley's dad, who was a coach. He would have wanted his son to attend Stanford. But it was a door #3 issue.

5) Stanford typically recruits five volleyball players. Let's say that Stanford recruits like crazy and gets the five best players in a year.  Players quit, don't pan out, get injured, transfer, lose interest, etc.  So let's say they get the best players.  They need to have good to great opposing players in a scrimmage to keep the level of competition high. That's difficult to do.

6) Does Stanford have the coaching staff?  Stanford's men's team has Head Coach Kosty, assistant head coach Shibuya and assistant coach Dan Rasay.  That's it.  A team of three.  The women's volleyball team has a team of eight professionals listed on their web site:

a) director of VB Hambly
b) Ass't Coach Johnson
c) Ass't Coach Thompson
d) Volunteer assistant Reinert
e) Technical Coordinator Carr 
f) Ass't Trainer Sicard
g) Sports Performance Coach Friedrich
h) Dir of operations Hambly.  Yes, she's the head coach's wife.  Also has a kinesiology degree.

So those are a few of the reasons.  Training, funding, recruiting, coaching. Coach Kosty will sell that Stanford has been ranked in the Top 15 for 12 of the past 14 years. But there are only 23 D1 teams playing men's volleyball, so...

[Mick]

Why is it that Stanford MVB's historical results (2 national championships, 5 final fours) pale so dramatically compared to WVB (9 national championships, 23 final fours). It seems as if both programs would be recruiting from the same pool so to speak, and there's far more depth of competition on the women's side. Is there a simple answer or a number of factors that have resulted in WVB being so dominant while MVB has often struggled at the top level? Is it a matter of resources which are now being addressed with this fundraising effort?

I don't know the actual answer, but I can give you an educated guess.  Here's a few reasons:

1)  High school girls' volleyball is more closely akin to football than it is to boys' volleyball, in terms of participation.  About 10x the number of girls than boys play in high school.  

2)  The number of girls' competitive clubs dwarve those of boys.  Which leads to surplus of recruitable high school women athletes.

3)  I was peeking over coach Kosty's shoulder at the Junior Olympics one year.  He had the Volleyball Magazine's Top 50 attached to his clipboard.  Four of the names were highlighted.  I asked "Are those the players you really want?"  He replied "Those are the four who can get into Stanford."  I don't think the leading academic lights generally pursue volleyball at the highest level.  And if they do, they have incredible options.

4)  Volleyball players don't really have a chance to earn big money in the pros.  So they may gravitate to programs where they won't have to work as hard, or pay as much.  Recruited volleyball players get a one-quarter scholarship.  That's it.  But the following schools have competitive men's varsity programs, many of which require far less of a time commitment than Stanford: Harvard, Princeton, MIT, NYU, USC, UCLA, UCI, UCSB, UCSD, and UC Santa Cruz.  And as a kicker, Cal has two club teams, one of which plays excellent ball.  They actually recruit at junior tournaments with a pretty compelling sell: an education virtually as strong as Stanford/Harvard/Princeton/MIT but you commit to volleyball 12 hours a week instead of 40.  Since it wasn't a varsity program, my son scrimmaged with that Cal team as a junior in high school.  The setter had been recruited to UCLA and UCSB, but chose to go to Cal and made a very compelling argument to my son as to why he should go to Cal versus Princeton.

Three-time All American libero Gage Worsley (UHawaii) was from Campolindo HS in Moraga, and played in a competitive league. Coach Shibuya probably saw him play 30-40 sets a year for a few years. I knew Worsley's dad, who was a coach. He would have wanted his son to attend Stanford. But it was a door #3 issue.

5) Stanford typically recruits five volleyball players. Let's say that Stanford recruits like crazy and gets the five best players in a year.  Players quit, don't pan out, get injured, transfer, lose interest, etc.  So let's say they get the best players.  They need to have good to great opposing players in a scrimmage to keep the level of competition high. That's difficult to do.

6) Does Stanford have the coaching staff?  Stanford's men's team has Head Coach Kosty, assistant head coach Shibuya and assistant coach Dan Rasay.  That's it.  A team of three.  The women's volleyball team has a team of eight professionals listed on their web site:

a) director of VB Hambly
b) Ass't Coach Johnson
c) Ass't Coach Thompson
d) Volunteer assistant Reinert
e) Technical Coordinator Carr 
f) Ass't Trainer Sicard
g) Sports Performance Coach Friedrich
h) Dir of operations Hambly.  Yes, she's the head coach's wife.  Also has a kinesiology degree.

So those are a few of the reasons.  Training, funding, recruiting, coaching. Coach Kosty will sell that Stanford has been ranked in the Top 15 for 12 of the past 14 years. But there are only 23 D1 teams playing men's volleyball, so...