A note from Lee Feinswog:
One thing I’ve learned since Ed Chan and I bought Volleyball magazine in 2016 is that volleyball never sleeps.
Every day we have volleyball.
There’s always something going on in our sport every day all over the world. Luckily, we get to tell you about it here at VolleyballMag.com.
After Ed and I took over, we launched the new VolleyballMag.com website on August 1, 2016. It was a bold step for a nearly four-decades old publication, leaving print completely and going strictly digital.
But it enabled us to cover the sport on all fronts every day, from NCAA women’s and men’s indoors, to college and pro beach, to the pros and our USA national teams.
Sadly, Ed died in September 2021 not long after he got back from covering the Tokyo Olympics, where he photographed nearly every single USA match, men’s and women’s, indoors and on the sand.
When he died, Ed was in Chicago covering AVP. Ed loved beach volleyball more than anything except his wife, Julie. Please read this tribute we did about him.
Ed was the top volleyball photographer in the world. His work has been part of the magazine for, well, basically forever. You should also check out his website, VBshots.com, where all his photos remain.
As far as I go, I’m one of just a few mainstream sportswriters who cover volleyball. My resume includes being the LSU basketball beat writer for many years and I’ve written three books, two about LSU football and another called HoopDaddy, about fathers, sons and basketball. I’m also the host and producer of the Baton Rouge TV show Sports 225 (sports225.com).
But I also owned a girls club, Volleyball Baton Rouge, before retiring it in 2019 after 20 years. I started writing for Volleyball magazine in 2012. I love our sport and its culture and am thrilled to be involved in volleyball every day.
Luckily, I have plenty of help from a lot of great folks who have stepped up in a big way since Ed left us.
Travis Mewhirter has been the anchor of our pro beach coverage. He’s not only an outstanding pro player, but as good a writer as there is, period. If you’ve read his stuff, you know. He also does SANDCAST, the weekly podcast about beach volleyball with Olympian Tri Bourne. You can find him training on Hermosa Beach most mornings when he’s not racking up airline miles playing beach all over the world.
Chuck Curti is a sports copy editor and writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and a 30-year veteran of sports journalism in the Greater Pittsburgh area. But luckily for us, his scope of volleyball runs nationwide and his features, mostly about NCAA women’s and men’s volleyball, run the gamut.
We have so many great photographers who shoot for us, many of whom were great friends of Ed’s, from Mark Rigney to Rick Atwood to Michael Gomez to Jim Wolf. Those guys are pros and when they’re shooting beach volleyball I know I’m going to get too many great photos to use. Andy J. Gordon has joined us in the last year and has shown his versality indoors and on the beach.
We also boast the best girls club and high school coverage because of John Tawa. Simply put, Tawa is regarded as the foremost national expert on girls high school and club volleyball.
Once a practicing trial lawyer, Tawa wised up after 10 years and turned in his pinstripes for a pen, where he’s been writing about volleyball since 1998. He got his start in the sport covering Mira Costa and Redondo Union High Schools as sports editor at the Easy Reader Newspaper in Hermosa Beach, California. He went from there to be the managing editor of Student Sports Magazine and the former national volleyball editor for StudentSports.com. In 2003, he founded the national volleyball site, PrepVolleyball.com, which quickly became the most popular volleyball news site in the country. In addition to his work for VolleyballMag.com, Tawa also writes for the Oregon School Activities Association and California Interscholastic Federation.
Former Volleyball magazine editor Mike Miazga is still a big part of the team. He’s the man behind the Fab 50 lists and high school All-American teams and much more.
Rob Espero, when he’s not chasing kids or surfing the waves, does so much, including his weekly NCAA men’s volleyball videos and handling a lot of our social media, including Instagram.
We get great beach volleyball analysis from Tom Feuer, a four-time national Emmy Award winner. Tom, a veteran volleyball writer and producer. He has worked 11 Olympics for NBC Sports, most recently as a producer for beach volleyball at the Rio Games in 2016. Feuer has also worked for Prime Ticket/Fox Sports West as an executive producer where he produced AVP broadcasts in 1989-1990, and later, pioneered the popular “AVP Classics.” While at NIKE in 1997, he was event director for the first FIVB World Championships of Beach Volleyball. Feuer has also won 15 regional Emmy Awards and, most recently, won the Grant Burger Media Award from the AVCA.
We have some people behind the scenes who make things work at VolleyballMag.com. Our director of operations is Stacey Faris, who handles just about everything you could imagine for our business. Phil Hrichak, the former sports editor of the Winston-Salem Journal, is our content editor. Our most popular feature on the site is our VolleyballMag.com TV & Streaming Listings and those invaluable links are the product of the painstaking work of Lauren Olds.
When he can, Blair Lambert contributes about international pro men’s volleyball, and during the NCAA women’s season, the Big Ten Network’s Emily Ehman is a weekly fixture in our video interviews.
So every day, because, well, volleyball never sleeps, this incredible team and I will continue to provide you the best volleyball coverage anywhere.
Contact me any time at lee@volleyballmag.com. We love to hear from our readers, whether it’s about story ideas for me or our staff, attaboys and, yes, corrections and criticisms.
Lee