University of the Pacific Men's Volleyball program to make comeback, hires coach after 13-year gap
Thirteen years after being cut, the popular men's volleyball team is being added back as an official sport at the University of the Pacific.
The Pacific Tigers men's volleyball program was discontinued after 2014. Now, it's making a comeback.
"Programs today, the financial realities are there," athletic director Adam Tschuor said. "What we have to do, we're sharing the pie with the student-athletes now, which is a very divisive thing. I think it's a good thing, in terms of I think that they've earned that opportunity but it is an expense and where a lot of schools are cutting programs, we've found a way to grow and add. I hope more schools learn from that."
Pacific needed to figure out how to navigate the new D1 athletics era, and Tschuor said the impetus for this happened in May 2024 when the House settlement "hit that changed college athletics as we know it."
Tschuor said the talk is about money and revenue sharing with athletes, but a big change was going from scholarship caps to roster caps.
"Private institutions, like us, that are reliant on enrollment, that became a problem," Tschuor said. "We were going to have to say goodbye to 30 student-athletes that were over and above the roster caps that we had. So, it became very difficult for us, funding-wise, and, along with the university, we didn't want to be a drain on enrollment."
Tschuor said they "embarked on a mission to investigate sports" with large roster caps and low overhead to make sense financially.
"Lo and behold, there were a couple of sports on that list that we had a history with," Tschuor said. "And the one that really shined the light for us was men's volleyball."
Tschuor hired Devin Young from BYU to lead the restarted volleyball program as its new head coach. Young is from Pennsylvania and made the BYU volleyball team as a walk-on. He actually played against Pacific in their final year.
"It's just so much excitement to have it renewed and coming back on campus, and honestly, I see so much potential out of this program," he said.
Young's goal is to get the team to be top 10, top 5 in the nation, admitting it's going to take some time but he thinks they can be a winning team.
Young talked about the growth of the sport in high school and said they just need more growth now in college for men's volleyball. Tschuor said there's big interest for U.S. volleyball, especially with the 2028 LA Summer Olympics right around the corner and said that this is a volleyball-rich space with kids playing club and high school in this region, the Bay Area and the Central Valley.
"Our history with the sport itself and we've got LA 28 coming up, we had a great support with USA Volleyball to bring this sport back, so it's really impactful, not just for the region, for our alumni base, and for our communities," Tschuor said. "But when you look at our history with women's volleyball, it's our only sport we've won national titles in."
The USA Volleyball Foundation, First Point Volleyball and East Coast Volleyball gave a $250,000 grant to support the new program.
Coach Young is not only excited about volleyball, but also about coaching 18 young men to be contributors to society.
"Sport, and volleyball in particular, especially being such a team-oriented sport, it teaches so many life lessons that we can build young men into men who are going to go out and contribute to the world," Young said.
Pacific Volleyball alumni are already rallying to support the new team, which plays its first match in the spring of 2027.
Tschuor said men's volleyball is one of four sports they've added in the last two years.