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Date: 7/2/2021
HOLYOKE – The International Volleyball Hall of Fame has begun slowly reopening its doors to the public while continuing to honor the sport’s history in the city where it was born.
Executive Director George Mulry said the past year and a half brought a lot of changes for the hall. While he said the time was “challenging,” Mulry added that it was beneficial for the hall. “This was a challenging year and a half. There were a lot of changes, it gave us a chance to pause and look at the systems we had in place and look at how our museum was used publicly,” he said.
Through that process, Mulry said they made the decision to move some exhibits online with plans to continue digitizing more exhibits in the future. “We moved a couple exhibits online, we have plans to move some more,” he said.
Increasing accessibility to the museum became a point of focus in March 2020 after the coronavirus pandemic impacted the Western Massachusetts area, forcing them to close their doors. This, he said, was difficult as they are an international museum who welcome visitors from all over the country and world each year. “We’re an international museum, it was hard. We get visitors from 12 or 14 different countries, visitors from every state,” he said.
Mulry said they were able to offer “a little bit” of virtual programming to keep the public engaged with the museum, including a ride and run. He said through this event they were able to host virtual bike rides and 10K races “all over the world,” in addition to raising money for the museum and their partner, One Military Kids.
He said while they were beginning to slowly open their doors, at the moment they were only open on the weekend. This, he said, was due to staffing issues as well as funding. “Really we’re open right now, we’re trying to be open more. Currently it’s just on the weekend, Saturday, Sunday,” he said. “Our goal is to expand our hours to six or seven days a week throughout summer, we’re looking for different funding opportunities to make that happen.”
While they were able to navigate some events through virtual programming, one event that did not take place last year due to the pandemic was the 2020 Hall of Fame Induction ceremony. Mulry said they had considered a virtual event, but after getting feedback from previous inductees they decided that was not the route they wanted to take. “We did not want to do a virtual event, we got a lot of feedback from inductees that loved being in Holyoke and wanted new inductees to experience that,” he said.
Mulry added that the 2021 induction class is larger than their normal class to accommodate for a lack of ceremony and induction during 2020. In a typical year between four and six inductees are honored, however, this year Mulry said there are nine inductees. While the larger class size is a product of not having a ceremony last year, he also said it was simply a product of the voting. “It was more of a function of how the voting came out, everything was so close because it was such a strong class. It didn’t seem right to exclude someone because they were one vote away from the next person,” he said.
Mulry said inductees are “typically involved at the highest levels” of the sport including olympic athletes. While there were awards that honored others and their contribution to the sport, he said there are “hundreds of millions that play volleyball” leading to their strict standards for inductees. He said currently the museum has “146 inductees from different countries.”
“It’s an elite group that gets honored each year, which is a function of the small class size. That’s really telling of the person that needs to be inducted,” he said.
The induction ceremony, slated for Oct. 16, and weekend will look slightly different than it has in the past, but will still allow for inductees to be honored and enjoy the city. He said one of the challenges of the induction ceremony and hosting visitors has been the rapidly changing travel regulations around the world. “That right now is an extreme challenge, seeing how things are going throughout the world. Our plan is to follow any CDC and local Board of Health guidelines,” he said. “Instead of over three days, it’s over two to get folks in and out and honor them in the proper way. We don’t want people to have to stay here longer than they want to or have to.”
Attendees, he said, are “coming from all over the world” and all inductees would be attending the event. Mulry said they were “really excited for how this class turned out” and there was a lot of “excitement [and] energy around that.” He said they were already selling multiple tickets and hotel reservations for the weekend of the induction and felt as though “people are excited to get out” after a year of being stuck in their homes.
Also taking place this year, he said, was the 125th anniversary of the invention of volleyball. He said as part of their effort to highlight those who made significant contributions to the sport and incredible moments in the sports’ history, the museum would be doing “top moments in the sports history” on their social media. Mulry said they planned to highlight the 125 top moments in volleyball, not just at the Olympics, but “anyone who’s been able to do a really amazing achievement in the sport.” He said that would likely be done on social media, beginning when the Olympics start and continue until the induction ceremony in October.
Ultimately, Mulry said he felt that Western Massachusetts was fortunate enough to have two olympic sports invented in the region. He said having the museum gave people the chance to “honor the history or heritage of our area, see what it took.” He said, “The invention of basketball led to the invention of volleyball and see the changes over the years. Volleyball was incredibly passive, [but] has turned into this hard hitting, fast sport.”
“We’re trying to tell that story and put it in the framework of Western Mass. We’re fortunate right now our museum visitorship is ahead of where it was in 2019. It feels like we’re finally opening up again and able to do fun things again,” he said.
Those interested in visiting the museum should reserve a time slot ahead of time online at https://www.volleyhall.org.