Volleyball Magazine Celebrates 35th Anniversary

In December 2011 Volleyball magazine proudly celebrated its 35th anniversary. The industry’s top publication commemorated the special milestone by releasing a list of the top 35 players, male and female, to ever hail from American soil. The list included such dynamic duos as Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor, and Karch Kiraly and Sinjin Smith, who came together to grace the cover of the commemorative December/January issue of the magazine.

It has not always been an easy and smooth road traveled for the magazine, which has taken many different twists and turns, changed names, and even been through a merger. But 35 years after the inaugural issue, which featured UCLA men’s player Joe Mica on the cover, Volleyball magazine is still here to bring readers all things volley.

The original magazine, which started out in the winter of 1976 as a quarterly publication before going bi-monthly, had a staff that included highly decorated player Jon Lee as senior editor, former Cal State Northridge sports information director Don Weiner as editor, and Bruce Hazleton and legendary Sports Illustrated photographer Richard Mackson as two of the magazine’s key photographers. The magazine lasted five years with its demise coinciding with the IVA going out of business.

The second player to come onto the scene, Volleyball Monthly, was a publication started in 1982 by California beach player Jon Hastings and his business partner, Dennis Steers, in a tabloid newspaper format (14 ½ by 10 ¾ and printed on newsprint) and provided readers with the latest news, results and features from the volleyball world—information rarely disseminated in any media form back then. And then in 1990, Volleyball was founded by Australian Clyde Packer’s Western Empire Publications, which also counted surfing and body boarding titles in its magazine dossier. The magazine started as a bimonthly and evolved into a 12 times a year publication in 1991.

In 1990 Volleyball Monthly was sold to Volleyball’s owner, Packer, and the two magazines were combined in February 1995 to create what is today’s Volleyball magazine.

Packer sold the magazine in mid-1997 to McMullen Argus, a division of magazine publisher Primedia, who in an ill-fated move in 2002, sold Volleyball to now-defunct Ashton International Media out of Worcester, Mass. Volleyball’s current owner, Boston-based Madavor Media, LLC, purchased Volleyball in 2004 along with four other Ashton titles.

Volleyball magazine continues to be the leading print voice in the volleyball industry, and has strengthened its presence in the industry by recently partnering with leading volleyball radio show The Net Live, and relaunching a new and improved website. Volleyball magazine also has a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter.