Mini Chinese 9-Man Volleyball Tourney Thrills Thousands on LES

A screaming comes across the sky. It’s a red, white, and blue Mikasa volleyball, and on the weekend of July 19-20, across 20 courts erected at six different parks, the Lower East Side came boundingly alive to the sights and sounds of tricolor spheres being launched off the agile, powerful hands of over a thousand Chinese-American, Chinese-Canadian, and other hyphenate-Asian youth.

Why? It’s called the New York Mini and whether the matches are of the 9-Man or 6-Woman variety, it’s anything but small.

Founded in 1987 and organized by the host team New York Strangers, this year’s tournament included 100 teams: 60 men’s and 40 women’s, from San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia, and, of course, the Big Apple.

A New Game Comes to Old China

Exactly how this came to be historically is a little elusive. Volleyball itself was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan of the Holyoke, Mass., YMCA, as a less-vigorous alternative to basketball, which had been invented in 1891. The game took off, first in the US and then abroad. Volleyball was a sport in the 1913 Far East Games in Manila, the Philippines, and somehow—probably through Christian missionaries—became very popular in Toisan (Taishan), in the Guangdong province of Southern China.

As Chinese immigration to the US grew throughout the early 20th century—with the large majority of the immigrants being men—volleyball became a cornerstone of recreational culture in American Chinatowns, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, and of course New York. Beyond the joys of the game itself, 9-Man became a living symbol of Chinese solidarity in cities that were often indifferent to their welfare.

By the 1930s, 9-Man was an established part of the urban fabric, though one little known to outsiders. Like the other city games of handball, stickball (or sandlot baseball), and basketball, 9-Man has few requirements: A net, a ball, and a little open space will do.

The use of nine players per side increases participation and makes the play somewhat more aggressive at the net with all those additional outstretched arms rising to block an opponent’s shot.

There are some interesting rule changes in 9-Man. Most noticeable is that there’s no rotation. Rather, each team has three designated servers on the court at any given time. Jump serves are forbidden, but striking your own ball after it hits the net is allowed.

Ethnicity rules apply to both the men’s and women’s teams. For the men, six of the nine players on court must be 100 percent Chinese, for the women, it’s four of six, with the others of at least half Asian descent from the following countries: Myanmar (formerly Burma), Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

The Courts of Public Competition

With all that settled, let’s play!

The weather on the weekend of the event was excellent and mostly sunny, with temperatures peaking in the comfortable 80s. As for the brief rain shower and the intense humidity that followed . . . that’s why they call it summer.

Given the amount of time that the players, coaches, and others spend outside—which was essentially all day, with matches starting at 8am and continuing until after 6pm—the respite from the city’s recent, more inferno-like conditions benefited everyone, including volleyball reporters who were walking from venue to venue and back again.

While each of the six parks used for the tournament has its own unique story, together they reflect the melding of greater Chinatown and the old Jewish Lower East Side, where Cantonese and Mandarin have come to largely supplant Yiddish, with lots of Spanish mixed in, especially in the numerous large NYCHA projects near the East River.

Working one’s way from south to northeast, the venues for this year’s New York Mini, included:

Sara D. Roosevelt Park (three men’s courts) just north of Hester Street. Because this section of the park running up to Grand Street is below grade, it makes for quasi-arena effect, which encourages spectators to watch from the sidewalk of bordering Forsyth and Chrystie streets. The men’s championship matches were held here on Sunday.

Seward Park (three men’s, two women’s courts) was the site of the main “command center,” and also home of the beloved Seward Park Library, whose air conditioning and clean restrooms provided players a welcome respite on Saturday.

Cherry Clinton (two men’s courts) at its eponymous cross streets, adjacent P.S. 184, Wen Shuang school.

Lillian D. Wald Playground (one men’s, three women’s courts), where Cherry Street turns into a footpath between Montgomery and Gouverneur Streets and adjacent University Neighorhood High School.

Sol Lain Playground (three men’s courts)—adjacent PS 134, formerly the Henry Street Playground but renamed in 1971 to honor the memory of its eponymous local Jewish community activist, high school teacher, and sports coach.

Henry M. Jackson Playground (three women’s courts), which is named both for the streets it is bound by—Henry, Madison, and Jackson—and the once-famed Democratic senator from Washington state (middle name Martin, nickname “Scoop”). The colorful cityscape murals on the backside of the former JHS 12 (since converted to condos) arguably makes for the Mini’s most photogenic setting.

Each park also had its own “command center” for teams to check their schedules and standings, with adjacent areas in the parks used for staging and rest between matches. If anyone thinks volleyball isn’t a physically demanding sport, they should see the array of foam rollers, massage guns, compression gear, and athletic tape teams carry with them.

As this abundance of riches suggests, choosing which matches to watch is no simple task, nor is there an easy way to know what’s happening elsewhere in the round-robin-format tournament.

No matter. It’s all being tabulated, and the goal of all teams is first to win, and second, to win by as large a point differential as possible, as this determines the re-seeding of teams as the Mini goes on.

In this year’s 9-Man battle, the Toronto Connex A team took the gold, defeating Chicago United 312, while the Boston Knights beat their same city rivals, the Rising Ride, for silver.

On the women’s side, Toronto Connex A triumphed again, besting the Washington DC MVP Sky, while New York Freemasons battled past the New York Strangers Lunar team for silver.

Epic as this year’s tournament was, it was also a warmup for the sport’s largest event, the 80th edition of the North American Chinese Volleyball Invitational Tournament, (NACVIT). For the first time since 2015, the event, which rotates its host cities, will be held in New York, at the Jacob Javits Center, over Labor Day Weekend, Aug. 30-Sept. 1.