Hits Aren't Just for Kids

One Member’s Mission to Expand Adult Volleyball

Dr. Anna Bar has big plans for adult volleyball at MAC. Some of them might be more attainable than others.

“What MAC needs to do is build sand volleyball courts somewhere inside the club,” she says with a smile dawning on her face. “Let’s use this article solely to focus on that.”

Bar is serious about the desire for indoor sand volleyball in Portland — she points out that both Seattle and San Francisco have such facilities — but she’s grinning because that’s not what she wants to discuss.

Bar is here to throw down the gauntlet. She wants to form an adult MAC Volleyball team.

“If there were enough members who were volleyball players, you could form a team that plays in these other leagues and practices at the MAC. They have nationals for Masters athletes, and it could be similar to the way that the MAC Basketball Masters team plays at that level,” she says.

As the adjoining story illustrates, the club’s youth volleyball community is thriving. Bar would like to see her fellow adults step forward in large enough numbers to warrant more offerings for their age range. Currently 12-15 participants regularly attend the club’s Adult Open Play from noon to 2 p.m. Saturdays.

“Everyone has a pretty good knowledge of the game and how to do all the skills and rotate,” Bar says. “There are no real beginners, not that we wouldn’t welcome them.”

She adds that the regular weekly attendees are a good mix of players made up of about half men and half women, with a wide age range from late teens to older than 60. They play on a coed setup, with the net positioned between the standard men’s and women’s heights.

“I like the group of women, and it’s fun to play coed as well. The guys definitely tend to hit harder, but that makes it even more fun to dig if they’re trying to smash it.”

Bar has been in love with the game since she first started playing in upstate New York, and through college at the Air Force Academy and medical school at NYU. After moving to Portland to work as a dermatological surgeon at OHSU, she eventually joined MAC, where she was instantly excited to play and grow her game.

The proliferation of club volleyball options for youth has been encouraging for her to watch, but she also says the changing rules of the game have made it faster and more addictive for all ages. “It’s so popular now! My daughters are in 14 and 16 volleyball. There are 200 club teams in the Oregon region. I don’t think there are 200 basketball club teams in the region.”

The game might have changed for Bar, personally, as she’s aged, but she asserts that’s only presented new opportunities to learn and improve different skillsets.

“I’ve always liked the strategy of it. If you’re ever in a bad mood, you can just hit a ball. I like the camaraderie of the teams, and I like that

you can both play it both indoors and on sand,” she says. “I think as you get older, you’re hitting less hard. That just means you’ll have to make some smarter shots with better ball placement.”

She believes volleyball is a sport worthy of a Masters-style adult team, and would love to see the club community come together to make it worthy of a full-time court setup and dedicated practice space and times for members.

Eventually, she could see MAC having its own intramurals, with eight internal teams competing at the club.

“Growing the program would give today’s kids an outlet to play volleyball after they’re done with college when they move home. They go through club until 18, then they play in college, and maybe they move back to Portland. We want to give them a home where they can keep those volleyball skills intact and keep playing because you can play it as a lifelong sport. You can play into your 60s, 70s, whatever.,” says Bar.