Christine Vaughen pounds the floor with her feet and punches the air with two fists after a big kill.
Vaughen and her teammates immediately converge into a circle, with butt slaps aplenty and crowd noise blaring around them.
Her arms interlocked with her six teammates, Vaughen can hear, smell and touch each one of her teammates as they go review the next play’s strategy in the huddle.
Who says volleyball isn’t a contact sport?
With limited contact with opposing teams, volleyball teams like North Carolina create their own physicality with zealous celebrations and animated embraces after each point.
These huddles are not superficial showings of cheerleading. Rather, coach Joe Sagula says they’re an integral part of the sport’s competitiveness.
“There’s no physical contact across the net where sometimes people can release energy,” Sagula said. “There’s some way they want to create physical connections with people, so the way to do it is with your own team.”
Sagula said that a competitive energy is fostered in sports like basketball and football by direct physical contact with the other team.
A big hit in football or a posterizing dunk a la Danny Green can invigorate a team or a crowd, but in volleyball, Sagula said a lot of that energy is created by the team itself because of the separation of the two teams by the net.
Sagula said this year’s team has relied more than ever on that intra-team physicality because of its lack of size.
