In only the 3rd time in program history the UCLA Men’s Volleyball team named their Head Coach—and they didn’t have to go far from the Bruin family. On October 9th, 2024, the former Loyola Head Coach and former UCLA Assistant Coach under John Speraw, John Hawks steps into the role to continue the Bruin Men’s Volleyball legacy. In his first interview since the announcement last week John sat down with Rob to chat about going through the news of Speraw’s new position at USAV, what that meant for...

The CVW crew jumps back into the bandwidth to discuss some of the news that has dropped since the last NCAA MVB Championship ball dropped in May with coaching changes, hirings and other MVB related news. From there, Brad, Dan, Jay & Theo discuss all things Pairs Olympics style! We'll recognize some former D1-2 athletes representing other countries. The guys then jump into the nitty-gritty breaking down the pools, athletes and medal contenders. Spread the word because we're diving into USA...

    The USA is heading back to the Olympics as reigning Gold Medalists in Women's Indoor Volleyball. Part of that history-making team in the Tokyo 2020 (2021) Olympics was former Penn St. standout and current Paris 2024 Olympian Haleigh Washington! In this Paris Olympics Episode Haleigh comes back onto the Viral Volley Podcast for a second time to talk about her collegiate and professional volleyball journeys through Tokyo, VNL 2024, the upcoming USAV Cup series vs. world No. 8 Netherlands,...

TCU has become a national powerhouse in Collegiate Beach Volleyball in large part due to Spanish sensations Tania Moreno and Dani Alvarez. This same pair has now become TCU Beach's program-first-ever Olympians representing Spain! Dani joins Rob to discuss her beginnings in Beach Volleyball (from Tennis), trying indoor for 9 days, connecting with Tania and WINNING in Europe. Dani shares about how she found herself going to the USA to play Beach Volleyball and how she, Coaches Hector...

 (College Volleyball Weekly/Viral Volley Podcast Crossover) We are just mere weeks away from the 2024 Paris Olympics-- and with that there are a handful of former College Volleyball Weekly, both Beach and Indoor who will be representing their native countries. One of those atletes is first-ever Viral Volley Podcast guest (December 2019), Tina Graudina of Latvia and USC! Tina and Rob discuss her beginnings in volleyball in Latvi playing indoor, then transitioning out on the beach....

In this special post-season episode of CVW Beach T20, Rob connects with a first-time National Champion, Ashley Pater, who was one of only two freshman starting for Head Coach Dain Blanton's 4x National Champions USC Beach Volleyball. During Ashley's pre-collegiate career she had an enormous amount of success on the beach with multiple first place/gold medal finishes, with maybe 2 or 3 2nd/silver place finishes-- LITERALLY. Ashley was privileged to receive the offer letter and risked jumping...

As we enter the summer Viral Volley Media will be doing episodes for relevant news for athletes, teams, coaches and/or other volleyball personalities from the National Teams (the "Road to Paris 2024"), Pro Volleyball Federation, Athletes Unlimited, NCAA Men's/Women's/Beach, and/or etc. Who knows, we may even throw in a couple AVP/FIVB athletes, top recruits and more!   Episode 233 will feature a member of the first-ever Pro Volleyball Federation Championship team, the Omaha Supernovas' BROOKE...

The CVW Coaching Panel wanted to get this Q&A Episode together because it's what our listeners wanted!  Today we explore the expansion of the MIVA, formation of the GLVC, new teams and Division 1 & 2 expansion. Naturally, we flow into the rise of the portal and how coaches/teams view some of the different perspectives of it's availability to the athletes. Sprinkled in there are questions about ball pressure, "poachable players," favorite venues to play in and some friendly banter....

In this 2024 season finale, Kelly Belardi of Stanford Beach Volleyball and Kylie Wickley of Texas Beach Volleyball with Rob Espero discuss the AVCA All-America team honorees, along with the AVCA Top Flight recipients. In addition, the CVW crew discusses the happenings at the 2024 NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship in Gulf Shores (that moves to Huntington Beach, CA in 2025). Special thanks to the ladies mentioned above along with Jaden Whitmarsh of UCLA and Alli Hansen of Florida St. for their...

The entire CVW crew of Brad Rostratter of UCSD, Dan Friend of Lewis, Jay Hosack of George Mason and Theo Edwards of CSUN talk all things National Collegiate Volleyball Championship week! From the opening quarterfinals, All-America Social, semis to the finals. The guys break it down for all volleyball fans alike! They guys talk about A LOT in this mega-80-minute episode. Additionally, the remaining crew dives into a more recent trend in Men's Volleyball-- the transfer portal. Know that we ran...

The NCAA Collegiate Beach Championship is all set. Nine auto-bids and eight at-large berths. There are top dogs in the mix but there are a bunch of upstarts chomping at the bit for the Natty hardware! Among those teams were 3 first-ever appearances for UT Chattanooga, Washington and Arizona St.!  Instead of our normal panel we thought we'd jump on a unique opportunity-- two sisters whose teams could not be more different-- Kendall Whitmarsh of Arizona St.-- the "first-timer" and older sis,...

THE NCAA MEN'S D1-2 TOURNAMENT IS ON! 3/4ths of our coaching panel dive into the matchups, but not before discussing the recently release AVCA All-America teams, the Freshman of the Year, Assistant Coach of the Year and the Coach of the Year! See what Dan Friend of Lewis (at least for half the episode), Brad Rostratter of UCSD and Jay Hosack of George Mason had to say today about what could be an EXCITING NCAA Championship in Long Beach! BE SURE TO WATCH OVER AT NCAA.COM for quarterfinals...

With the conference championships concluded the CVW Coaches' Panel will review some of the many eye-catching results and standout performances by teams and athletes. With the auto-berths awarded and the At-Large berths made known we ask the controversial question: "Did the NCAA Committee get it right?", and of course, "Are the seedings correct?" As always, some side discussions arise with tournament expansion along with other tidbits of discussion that give you insight to the what we could...

We're about 10 days out from conference tournaments around the nation in Gul Shores, AL.   Kylie Wickley of Texas and Jaden Whitrmarsh of UCLA discuss the Texas' season finale as the Longhorns get their first-ever top-20 program win. From there we run into the top 11-ish and focus on the Center of Effort Challenge which saw a handful of upsets while UCLA continued to assert itself at the top.

Our missing panel member, Jay Hosack of George Mason couldn't make the earlier recording didn’t so we decided to do a “CVW After Dark” episode discussing the final week of conference play and the upcoming conference tournament matches. Jay brings attention to some of the top performers, looks at potential AVCA National Player of the Year candidates and even goes out on a limb to say who will win certain tournaments—all this with beer in hand 😊.

As we conclude the regular season for the remaining 5 auto-NCAA berth conferences the coaching panel of Brad Rostratter of UCSD, Dan Friend of Lewis and Theo Edwards of CSUN discuss some of the top matches in final week of the conferences’ play. Will a new number one emerge in the AVCA poll? What did we see in the quarterfinal rounds of the MIVA? What teams could shine in post-season play? As always, the crew names their “Ballers of the Week (CVW’s Players of the Week).” Rob then poses the...

Week 14 saw a great docket of top 5 teams squaring off, regular season champions in some conferences and in one case a tournament field and seedings set. The CVW crew breaks down what happened in Week 14 and inserts their insights, opinions and in some cases, complaints.  In addition, we discuss Jay's 1st-ever Conference/NCAA MVB Tournament Bracket, pick our "Ballers of the Week," and discuss some of the key matches in Week 15 to watch out for! 

With Week 6 in the books and a handful of top 20 teams idle the student-athletes drive the discussion-- which essentially ended up being a "Death Volley Invitational" summary/recap episode and chatting about how the top teams are getting it done. With that, we discuss some of the key performers during the week, athletes with milestone achievements-- like CVW's own Alli Hansen who has amassed 100 career wins. In our discussions, Cal Poly has been beyond good-- and the Mustangs have done it...

Things are "kinda" sorting out across the conferences, but still not secure with surprise results, injuries and adjustments playing key factors to what we're seeing in the final few weeks of the 2024 regular season. As always, the Coaching Panel runs down summaries of what's happening in each of the NCAA-tourney bid conferences, The Big West, Conference Carolinas, EIVA, MIVA, MPSF and the SIAC. The coaches then take over and direct the discussion to tourney selection, All-America selections...

The CVW BEACH TOP 20 Student-Athlete panel chimes in on the action in Week 5 that saw yet another handful of upsets ranging from No. 18 GCU of No. 10 LSU all the way down to Big West teams in the top 10 hammering away at each other. The CVW crew mentions top performances by TCU and USC pairs as well as Arizona St. From there the crew talks about the upcoming Death Volley Invitational where #1 USC, #4 TCU, #10 LSU, #5 FSU, #2 UCLA, #17 FAU, #3 Stanford, and #6 Cal all battle in Baton Rouge,...

In Week 12 it seems March Mayhem has re-entered the scene with the MIVA Conference seeing a handful of unexpected results! With only 2-3 weeks remaining in the regular season and conference tournaments around the corner, expect more mayhem! Not excluded from the mayhem is the Big West Conference—with only one matchup during the week that resulted in an upset-split of the No. 2 team in the nation. As always, our coaches’ panel discuss the weeks they’ve had as well, but we also chat about what...

Week 4 of the NCAA Collegiate Beach season and East Meets West in Manhattan Beach, CA along with the FAU Invite in Pompano Beach, FL took center stage as a lot of top 20 teams went at it. Kelly Belardi of Stanford, Jaden Whitmarsh of UCLA and Kylie Wickley of Texas gathered to chat on what we saw in Week 4 as well as through the mid-point of the season (even though Texas hosted their first-ever home tri-dual today). As always, we talk some of the top performers of the week, then look forward...

Week 11 brought another 1 vs. 2 matchup resulting in what will most likely be new No. 1-- again. With that we discuss a handful of the top matches of the week but try a new piece for our Coaches' Panel: "If You Were on the NCAA Committee" segment! The coaches discuss what the 20243 NCAA Tournament would look like today given the 8-team scenario and also venture in to what that could look like if it were a 12-team scenario. Tap in and spread the world. We're officially into the last month of...

This week we jump into our first special episode with the East Meets West in Manhattan Beach this weekend. With that, the Seminoles of Florida St. "take over" the show to talk about their start to 2024, how deep and talented the 'Noles squad is as they've been hovering at No. 4 in the AVCA and CollegeBeachVB.com polls. They're chomping at the bit to make the case to be at the top. CVW Beach Contributor Alli Hansen and teammate Morgan Chacon chat all things Seminole!