Tawa’s Club Volleyball Dots: TAV takes advantage to win Natty in 18 Open
April 30, 2024
May 30, 2023
While California — and justifiably so — is known as the sport’s hotbed that has churned out so many great volleyball players over the years, we must continue not to sleep on the Land of Lincoln when it comes to the youth boys side of things.
A look at the 2023 VolleyballMag.com Boys Fab 50 proves the state of Illinois, particularly the Chicago suburbs, continues to up the ante and crank out quality players that go on to play at significant NCAA Division I-II programs.
On the heels of having seven Illinois-based selections in 2022, this year 12 players from Illinois grace the Fab 50 list, which highlights the top 50 boys senior-age youth players in the nation as voted on by an elite panel of NCAA Division I-II coaches. VolleyballMag.com has no involvement in the voting process beyond sending out the ballot and tabulating the final results.
The longest-running boys volleyball list in the country under the auspices of the 47-year-old Volleyball Magazine/VolleyballMag.com brand, the Boys Fab 50 takes into consideration a player’s overall skill level and is not exclusive to his high school, club or USA Volleyball prowess. Our annual boys high school All-American awards will be released this summer.
Drilling down deeper into that Illinois dozen, 11 different Chicago city-limit and suburban high schools are represented, along with seven different clubs (Ultimate leading the way with three Fab 50 picks) and nine different college inbound player recipients (Ball State and Loyola Chicago each have two Chicago-area signees).
Of course, California continues to be California with 22 Boys Fab 50 selections. No surprise there.
When it comes to college on this year’s list and what typically is a precursor to our VolleyballMag.com men’s college recruiting class rankings in the fall, coach John Hawks’ Loyola Chicago Ramblers head the list with eight Fab 50 selections, followed by UCLA and Lewis with five each, and Pepperdine, USC, Hawai’i and George Mason with four each. Sixteen Division I-II programs had at least one Fab 50 selection.
Interesting this time around was voting for who the top player in the Class of 2023 is, which yielded no runaway winner, but two clear-cut choices with a decent voting gap after that.
USC signee Wes Smith (6-10 middle out of the San Diego area) is the top-ranked player. He edged UC Santa Barbara-bound George Bruening (Corona del Mar for high school and Balboa Bay for club out of Southern California) by two voting points.
Five different players received a first-place vote.
Smith joins a list of recent top Boys Fab 50 recruits that includes Dillon Klein (USC, 2022), Klistan Lawrence (Long Beach State, 2021), Clarke Godbold (Long Beach State, 2020) and Alex Knight (UCLA, 2019). Klein was named to the all-MPSF second team and the all-MPSF freshman team this spring. Godbold was the Big West freshman of the year in 2021, while Knight was a second-team All-American selection this past season and was named the most outstanding player of the 2023 NCAA men’s tournament, helping lead the Bruins to their 20th national title.
After Bruening and Smith, the 2023 top five rounds out with fellow UCSB recruit Josh Aruya at No. 3, Luca Curci (UCLA) at No. 4 and Cole Schobel (Loyola Chicago) at No. 5. Sebastiano Sani (Long Beach State) and Jake Read (Loyola Chicago) tied for the sixth spot and Jakobi Lange (USC) was eighth in that top player voting.
Balboa Bay out of Southern California was tops in terms of clubs loaded with Fab 50 picks — with five. The previously mentioned Ultimate out of the Chicago suburbs, Pulse, out of Anaheim, California, Outrigger (Hawai’i) and The St. James (Virginia) each had three.
Twins also are part of the mix — two sets to be precise. Pepperdine-bound Jack and Ryan Graves make up one set of twins, while Luke and Zach Pekol out of the Chicago south suburbs is the other. Actually, the Graves twins are triplets along with sister, Madi.
As always, we also include our VolleyballMag.com 25 Underclassmen to Watch List that highlights 25 top non-senior players around the country. Those on this list typically graduate to the Boys Fab 50 main list the next year. As a reminder, this is not a top-25 underclassmen list rather a list of 25 top non-seniors. And just like with the Fab 50, VolleyballMag.com has no involvement with the voting, which was done by that same elite panel of NCAA Division I-II men’s coaches.
Some top vote-getters on this end include Sterling Foley (USC commit), Tread Rosenthal (Hawai’i commit), Travell Jordan (out of Arizona), Caleb Blanchette (USC commit), Parker Tomkinson (USC commit), Tyler Robinson (USC commit), Sean Kelly (Princeton commit), Finn Kearney (Hawai’i commit) and Cole Hartke (Pepperdine commit). Of note with the 25 list, all 25 players are in the Class of 2024 category (juniors who will be seniors in high school this fall).