Introduction: USC Volleyball
It took just two volleyball seasons - 1948/49 and 1949/50 - for the University of Southern California to establish itself as a volleyball power with which to reckon by capturing local, state and national titles. Volleyball was not a recognized sport at USC, but that didn't prevent the president of the university, the student body government and the alumni association from readily and openly welcoming and heralding the accomplishments of a very fine group of dedicated players on the men's team. They won back-to-back national collegiate titles and had a total of nine players named to the All-American teams based on play in those two tournaments. To this day the achievements of those USC volleyballers remain obscure, not only to the university, but also to the sponsor of those tournaments, the United States Volley Ball Association.
Fifty-two years later, I, as the coach of the USC team during both years, seek to remedy that lack of recognition by utilizing long-misplaced documents to share with USC and the volleyball world in general a detailed description of what was surely a unique period in collegiate volleyball history.The chapters that follow will detail the events occurring during those two years in more or less chronological order. Each specific event or item mentioned is footnoted to one or more documents in nine appendices, A through I. The footnotes direct the reader to a document, e.g., E-5, meaning Appendix E, Document 5, to substantiate a statement or claim made in the text. Some documents are further subdivided into parts or pages. It is recommended that they be read in their entirety. Lengthy newspaper articles are shown first in scanner letter-size capacity format followed by enlarged sections of the article to make the print readable. Well over 125 documents are presented to the reader in this manner. The intent of such a large array of documents is to leave no doubt in the reader's mind regarding the authenticity of the statements or claims made in the text.The labor of evaluating, organizing and making this presentation has been time-consuming, monumental and often overwhelming. Just the prospect of scanning and making numerous copies of such a large amount of material would make one hesitate to take on the task of producing this work. The author feels the importance of making these data public, nevertheless, has been well-worth the effort.
Hans W. Vogel
Wednesday, June 19, 2002
