Luke Melia

personal

July 12, 2002

7/12/02, 1:17 am

This is a post about volleyball in New York City, mostly Manhattan. I wrote it as an email in response to a friend of a friend who was looking for info and figured it would be good to share so people can find it via the search engines…

The two big leagues in the city are NY Urban and Big City Volleyball. Urban is bigger, older, less organized, and less expensive than Big City. I’ve played in both and overall prefer Big City. Both leagues have scrimmages at the beginning of each season where individuals can come out and be placed on a team. Games for both these leagues are at high school and college gyms mostly on the upper west and upper east side.

Urban has an open play every Friday night at Brandeis High School (84th between Amsterdam & Columbus) at 7pm. Get there early to sign up. They have beginner, intermediate and advanced courts there.

Big City does a similar thing at Dalton on the upper east side on Friday nights.

The Gotham League is a gay and lesbian volleyball league at a high school in Chelsea. They’re straight-friendly and have open play on Wednesday nights during the summer.

URLs: http://www.nyurban.com/ | http://www.bigcityvolleyball.com | http://www.gothamvolleyball.org

Those are the leagues. Pick up…

There’s pick up doubles in the sand court in Central Park every weekend (not far from the bandshell). Level of play is extremely competitive. There’s also pick up fours and sixes on courts on pavement in the same area.

There’s a court with pick-up play weekends and after work downtown near the World Financial Center on the water.

I’ve heard that there’s a sand court at Riverside Park, but I’ve never been there.

Pier 25 on the Hudson River offers sand courts you can rent by the hour.

On the weekends, lots of people set up nets in Prospect Park in Brooklyn on the grass or dirt. We did that pretty regularly for a while, but lately we’ve been playing on beach most weekends. We’ll probably do it a few more times this summer and start up again in the fall, though. Most people in Prospect Park are pretty friendly, and if you’re on your own you can probably join people’s games if you ask nicely and they have space.

There are also beach tournaments most weekends on the Jersey Shore and on Long Island for an outside-the-city adventure. They’re pretty competitive and physically demanding. I really enjoy them. URLs: http://www.jsvba.com | http://www.eevb.net

I guess that’s about it. There’s a lot of people who love volleyball in the city, and once you start playing and meeting them, you’ll see the same people around again.

Hope that helps. Happy bumps, sets and spikes!

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