Progress 2017 - 2022

---

19 volunteer  board members that serve on First Point's Board of Directors gave $2.3 million of the $4.5 million raised by First Point Volleyball

 
(pictured: Scott Stowell, John Speraw, Morehouse President David A. Thomas, Interim A.D. Jay Edwards, Jamie Davis, Edwin Moses, and Wade Garard, at Morehouse College in Atlanta) Photo courtesy of Morehouse College.
 

First Point awarded grants to 38 colleges who have started men’s volleyball programs from each Division including NCAA DI, DII, NAIA and 2-Year Colleges.  These 38 schools have 70 athletic scholarships available that did not exist before First Point started.  This includes  17 new DI and DII  programs.  First Point forged a partnership with the NEC which announced that it will join the Big West as only the 2nd multi-sport NCAA DI conference to sponsor men’s volleyball.  Four new NCAA DI programs from the NEC announced new programs - a process started by First Point’s grants to St. Francis Brooklyn in 2019 and Fairleigh Dickinson in 2021.  Prior to St. Francis, a DI had not added men’s volleyball as a DI in over 18 years… and now the sport has added 4 programs in 4 years.    

In 2017 after years of slow growth, First Point awarded 4 grants in 6 months to 4 new NAIA programs, reaching the 40 program threshold for national championship status.  The momentum continued as there are now 68 NAIA men’s programs.  

Partnership with NJCAA.  After decades with no growth & the only junior colleges with programs in the state of California, First Point formed a partnership with the NJCAA and awarded 15 grants to start 15 new men’s volleyball programs at junior colleges in four states. .

First Point supports 50+ volunteers from 28 states working on local First Point committees to grow high school boys’ volleyball.  

Thanks to the leadership of First Point board member Scott Siegfried, Colorado (CHSAA) sanctioned boys volleyball in 2019.  Tenacious volunteer leaders in Ohio and Utah got pilot status formally approved in the last year, paving the way toward sanctioning in 2023.

First Point Volleyball Foundation seeks to have high school boys volleyball sanctioned in all 50 states.