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This is a clipped posting from rec.sport.volleyball in April of 1999. Here, USA Volleyball national referee Jim McMath gives some explanation as to why we have so many rule books for volleyball here in the USA. This email is published here with Jim's permission, and he retains copyright on this material.
To answer your question of why the US has three different sets of rules, you have to go back to the beginnings of volleyball. When Morgan created the game, it like basketball, grew out of the YMCA which catered towards adults. USA Volleyball, formally United States Volleyball Association (USVBA), is the National Governing Body (NGB) for volleyball and until the mid 1970s catered to adult play. In the mid to late 70's USVBA started a grass roots campaign to bring the game to teenagers and preteens. USVBA started its Junior Olympic Championships which are held every year around the 4th of July. With the Junior Olympic movement, many boys and girls club teams have developed throughout the US. However, before USVBA got involved with the Junior Olympic movement, two other organizations were developing the rules for Women's Collegiate and High School Volleyball. The National Association of Girls and Women's in Sports (NAGWS) has written the women's collegiate rulebook for several decades. Before the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) absorbed controll of all collegiate Division I, II, and III women's athletics in the early 80's, another organization called the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) controlled all women's collegiate sports. There is another organization called the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) that respresents a small percentage of Division II and III men's and women's programs, but around 90% of US colleges and Universities subscribe to NCAA. The NAGWS was closely affiliated with AIAW and wrote all the rule books for volleyball, basketball, soccer, field hockey, gymnastics, etc. Overtime, the NCAA adopted its own rules for these sports so that only the women's volleyball rulebook is written by NAGWS. The NAGWS rule committe is made up of college representatives, officials representatives and high school representatives. The rule committee chair is always from a college (women's coach or women's athletic director). Over the years, the NAGWS rules have slowly merged with USAV rules, so that only minor differences exist. The organization that represents the majority of high school sports in the US is the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFSHSA). As with NAGWS, NFSHSA developed over the decades to come up with a unified set of rules for all high school sports. Unlike NAGWS, NFSHSA has been much slower to adopt FIVB/USAV rule changes. Both NAGWS and NFSHSA profess the educational environment of sports, something that USAV does not have to profess, thus some of the rules differences have to deal with sportsmanship in an educational setting. Also like any organization, politics play a role. Neither NAGWS or NFSHSA wants to willingly give up their control to the NGB. I'm sure if you look at the Volleyball Canada rulebook and the Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union (CIAU) rules, there are bound to be some minor differences in the context of an educational setting. By the way, next year USAV will be adopting many of the FIVB rule changes such as rally scoring in all games, changing the referee mechanics to determining the next team to serve before identifying the fault and player that caused the fault, and going to the international score sheet, and use of the Libero for Open level competition. Jim McMath USAV National Referee PAVO State RefereeJim also adds....