PSAL girls volleyball has been a victim of its own popularity this postseason.
The league has typically played one to two rounds of its playoffs in the Hunter College basement auxiliary gym. In past seasons, this hasn’t been a problem. Last week, however, it was at times dangerous and chaotic.
During the PSAL Class A quarterfinals, parents, fellow students and supporters gathered along the perimeter of each of the two courts inside the gym, sometimes three people deep. Occasionally teams stayed to watch friends and rivals play and that also added to the mess.
It got worse in the semifinals Friday, when people had to spread out along the end lines to see Francis Lewis-Midwood and Susan Wagner-Cardozo. There were spectators sitting on the floor and in chairs in the corner by the teams’ benches, too. At one point, a Wagner player stepped back a few steps on a serve and, literally, had nowhere to go besides a row of people.
There’s nothing wrong with the facility or Hunter itself. But this gym is made for practices, not matches. There are no bleachers and just a handful of chairs where people sit on about a yard away from the court. It was almost like the girls were playing in a box. If a ball was to meander out of bounds, forget about trying to save it – you might land in somebody’s lap or worse, earn a twisted ankle for your effort.
I’m not good about estimating these kinds of things, but there were hundreds of people in that gym each day. Most had to sit on the floor or fight for a chair. When there was a glut of people near the doorway, school safety officers, justly, told people to move in. The only problem? There wasn’t anywhere to go.
Then there were the college coaches, and I saw close to a dozen from Division I, II and III schools, trying to recruit – which isn’t done nearly enough in New York City anyway. Them being in that small gym, pressed up against the wall – or another spectator – just makes the PSAL look bush league.
The first and second rounds, at York College, went off without a hitch. There is ample bleacher space there and the same ability to split the gym into two separate courts to have matches played simultaneously.
Look, large crowds are a great development for the PSAL girls volleyball league. The postseason, which will end Tuesday when No. 1 Francis Lewis and No. 3 Cardozo meet for the Class A championship, was exciting. The level of play from the quarterfinals on was excellent. This was the deepest field from seeds 1-10 that there has been in years and the committee did an excellent job putting teams where they belonged.
But to cram everyone into that practice gym for the quarterfinals and semifinals is an injustice to all the hard work those girls did all year, not to mention potentially dangerous and a fire hazard. I don’t foresee the crowds getting smaller and I hope people don’t get turned off by the poor spectator experience this week.
A change needs to be made, hopefully as early as boys volleyball season.
