Rachel Mak, Photography Editor

Last spring, the Yale men’s club volleyball team placed second in the DIIAA division at the National Collegiate Volleyball Federation national championships in Phoenix, with two players earning First Team All-Tournament awards.

This October, the team won a tournament at Harvard and hosted the first-ever Ivy League men’s volleyball tournament in Payne Whitney Gymnasium, where the Bulldogs placed second.

“I think what I’m most proud of this season is just our team mentality,” Edis Mesic ’28, one of the team’s captains and a staff reporter for the News, said. “We’re all just on the same page. We want to win. We know that this year we have a really, really good squad, and we want to make the most of it.”

The team hosts tryouts at the beginning of every fall, and the process is extremely competitive. Roughly 40 people try out each year, and only around four or five make the squad, junior libero Andy Cheng ’27 told the News. Cheng and setter Steven Dong ’26 were two players awarded for their outstanding performances at the national tournament in the spring.

“It really meant a lot, but I was definitely more proud that the team took home a silver medal than just an individual award,” Dong, who captained the team in his sophomore and junior years, said.

This year, the team is led by three co-captains: Mesic, Marcelus Wilderman ’27 and Jaxon Pierce ’28. They do not have a coach, so the players rely on one another to make decisions during games and at practices.

“It’s tough on one hand, because being a player and coach at the same time is a little difficult,” Mesic said. “But I think it’s also really cool, because it shows that our team really has trust in us to lead this team, and also we have complete faith in them, too, to do an amazing job.”

Each week, the team runs three two-and-a-half-hour practices at the Lanman Center in Payne Whitney, where the players run different offense- and defense-specific drills before scrimmaging against each other.

For the captains, maintaining intensity during practice is a key piece of why the Bulldogs have had so much recent success.

“We always say iron sharpens iron,” Pierce said. “We’re super competitive, and we’re pushing each other to get better. Every tournament, we’re just learning, and we’re working through problems as a team and always striving to get better.”

Most players on the team have high school, if not club, experience. Joining the team here allowed them to continue playing at a high level, despite men’s volleyball not being a varsity-level sport at Yale. Harvard and Princeton are currently the only Ivy League schools with varsity men’s volleyball teams.

“My team was composed of pretty much all college recruits, people who went and played collegiate volleyball after high school,” said Mesic, who grew up playing in Silicon Valley for Bay to Bay Volleyball Club, one of the preeminent youth programs in the country. “Being someone who didn’t go down that path, but who was in this very high-level atmosphere, very committed to the sport, I knew that I had to keep it a part of my life.”

This season, the Bulldogs have their sights set on another deep run at the national tournament. 

The division they will play in will be determined by their performance in spring league games, where they compete against other teams that will also be attending Nationals. The Elis are striving to move up to Division IIA or even Division IAAA after being Division IIAA runners-up and returning every player from last season’s Nationals squad except one.

The men’s club volleyball team will host their next home tournament on Jan. 24.