PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Growing up in Massachusetts as a Filipino with a Scottish last name, Mike McCullough admits it was hard for him to fit in.
“At the time, Filipinos weren’t considered Asian. They were just like: ‘What were you? Pacific Islander, Asian or not? Like what is that?’” McCullough said.
It wasn’t until he found volleyball and by extension 9-man with a club an hour away in Boston that he felt a sense of belonging. McCullough started his 9-man journey with the Boston Hurricanes, but switched to the Boston Knights to be around kids closer to his age.
“Honestly being with the Boston Knights really felt like I had a family, a home to go to,” he said. “They were a second home for me. I felt like they wanted me to be with them.”
It’s why he thinks the community of 9-man is so strong, even with its exclusivity.
On Saturday, at least 15 teams in that national community gathered in Philadelphia for the 17th annual Philadelphia Mini. It’s one of the many smaller 9-man tournaments hosted nationwide in the lead-up to Labor Day weekend, when the national championship is held every year.
The stakes may not be as high in Philly, but Henry Leong with the Philadelphia Suns, who organized the mini tournament, said it’s good practice, but about much more.
“It gives the teams opportunities to at least play throughout the summer,” he said. “It’s not just volleyball itself. The social part of it is probably the most important. Our families, our children and several generations have played.”
The volleyball variant of 9-man dates back almost a century or more to Toisan, China, in the Guangdong Province. The sport was brought to the U.S. by Chinese immigrants from that part of China in the 1930s, and was used as a way for many laborers spread across the various Chinatowns of the States to stay connected with one another.
Joey Yuen, who runs longtime club Chinese in America (CIA), said his dad first played in China before passing it onto him in the U.S.
“When our club started, the Chinese in America, it was just a group of friends that liked to play, and then we just got more friends to play and people who share the same love of volleyball, and it’s just grown over 24 years,” said Yuen.
In addition to being played with nine people on either side of the court as opposed to the traditional volleyball setup of six (except for women, who stay with six per side), Yuen said the court and rules also slightly differ.
“The net’s a little bit lower, the court’s a little bit longer, no double contacts, you can’t penetrate on the net, and the rules have stuck. There’s not that many changes over 75 years,” he said.
Other rule changes compared to traditional volleyball include more leniency with carrying the ball (as long as it’s one upward motion), no rotations of positions after each point, and only three people per team are allowed to serve per game. Like the forefathers who played on concrete, the most authentic 9-man experience also happens on the blacktop outside, but some tournaments with larger turnouts have played indoors.
There’s also still a rule for national circuit tournaments that at least six players per team must be of Chinese descent. It used to be every player, but Yuen said that rule has softened over time.
“I think they’re trying to be more inclusive, trying to get more people to play, but they have to keep that cultural identity of Chinese people on the court,” he said.
As a result of that tradition and history, there were many people at the Philly Mini with histories like Yuen.
For Mike Mon, who now plays for the New Jersey Ronin, his family is going on four generations of playing 9-man.
“At this point, everyone’s got their families, and we’re all spread out,” he said. “We all went to college with different people and we get to see them play volleyball every Labor Day weekend, and now there’s a whole series of these mini tournaments… every city’s got one, and that’s just another opportunity for everyone to get together and play.”
Mon also said playing 9-man is another way to celebrate Chinese culture in the U.S.
“We get to see people that look like us, that grew up like us, and you just have that immediate bond with someone that is maybe from New York or Boston who you’ve never met, but everyone grew up the same way,” said Mon. “We all grew up with the same cultural values, we all do Chinese New Year celebrations, and hey, we all love volleyball.”
Like Yuen, Danny Moy’s club, New York Strangers, started in the early 90’s as “a bunch of friends.”
“But prior to being friends, we’re all strangers,” said Moy. “Once you start playing, you become friends, hopefully best friends.”
These days, Strangers boasts both women’s 6-man and men’s 9-man teams of differing age ranges, and run clinics and tournaments — the most popular being the Mid-Summer New York Mini.
Moy also spoke to the growth of 9-man overall, despite it still being considered a “niche” sport.
“When I first started, the tournament itself — the national on Labor Day — was about 20-plus teams, now we’ve grown so much, to 180 in x-amount of years, and there’s no stopping it too,” he said.
Joining the ever-growing ranks of newcomers to the 9-man circuit in recent years is McCullough’s No Volleyball, No Life (NVNL) out of Bayside, Queens, New York. NVNL’s Azure Dragons were one of the many teams to lace it up at the Philly Mini for a warm-up, but their sights are squarely set on the national tournament in San Francisco in a few weeks.
Even though he wasn’t allowed to play 9-man until 2008, when the sport’s governing body altered the rules to welcome players with more diverse Asian backgrounds to the court, McCullough said his new club is all about respecting the sport’s history and traditions.
“Our biggest thing is that we want to make sure that we are building the young generation,” said McCullough, “to understand what 9-man is coming from, and why we do these things.”