When professional volleyball player Roni Jones-Perry was growing up in West Jordan, her options for watching high-level volleyball were slim.

She could watch collegiate matches at either the University of Utah or Brigham Young University, or wait for the Olympics. Watching professional players regularly, either in person or online, was entirely out of the question.

Jones-Perry said she didn't know that playing professionally was "really even a thing" until her freshman season at BYU. It was a shared challenge for volleyball enthusiasts across the country.

League One Volleyball, a professional women's league founded in 2020 and playing its first season in 2025, set out to change that.

"Now you have 14- and 15-year-old girls who are watching us do this and seeing volleyball at a level they wouldn't be seeing," Jones-Perry said in an interview with City Weekly. "I think it expands their vision about the sport, which is really exciting."

Jones-Perry is an outside hitter on LOVB's (pronounced "love") Salt Lake franchise. She's joined by a score of players who had previously applied their trade across the world, including United States Olympic gold and silver medalists Jordyn Poulter and Haleigh Washington.

LOVB Salt Lake is one of six franchises that make up the LOVB Pro league, with other teams in Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Madison and Omaha.

"It's fun seeing this idea that was presented to me five years ago become this tangible thing with courts and nets and a locker room," Washington said. "It sounds so small, but so many details had to be looked at."

The organization is not only working to make volleyball the next major sport in the United States, but to expand the game at a grassroots level.

LOVB houses 58 club teams in 24 states for girls between the ages of 12 and 18, as well as classes for 5- to 12-year-olds.

There are also camps in each of the six host cities with pro teams, which are led by the athletes and coaches.

Each team is built around one or two former Olympians as "founding athletes," with Washington and Poulter being chosen for Salt Lake.

First Serve
LOVB was founded by a trio of investors: Katlyn Gao, former general manager of Lululemon and Sephora; Peter Hirschmann, founder and CEO of Honolulu-based consulting firm Loom; and Kevin Wong, a former Olympic beach volleyball player.

There's a star-studded pool of investors funding the league, including Olympic skiing gold medalist Lindsey Vonn, five-time NBA All-Star Jayson Tatum, Fenway Sports Group partner Linda Henry, comedian Amy Schumer and two-time WNBA MVP Candace Parker, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

LOVB Salt Lake plays the majority of its home games at Salt Lake Community College's Bruin Arena in Taylorsville, but played back-to-back matches for a special "Weekend with LOVB" at the Maverik Center in early February. Team officials reported a sellout for the inaugural match on Jan. 22 at Bruin Arena.

The team is coached by Tamari Maiyashiro, who took home silver for the United States as a player in 2012, and gold in 2020 as an assistant coach.

Heading into the playoffs, LOVB Salt Lake sits in fifth place with a 5-8 record. While all six teams make the playoffs in Louisville starting April 10, the top two teams get a bye to the semi-finals. LOVB Salt Lake wrapped its regular season with matches on April 4 and April 5 at Bruin Arena.

Beyond Poulter and Washington, LOVB Salt Lake's roster features world-class talent, including Japanese libero Manami Kojima, up-and-coming opposite hitter Skylar Fields and University of Utah beach and indoor standout Dani Drews.

Washington noted that the LOVB league features Olympic-level competition from all across the world, including Italy (which took home the gold in Paris), Brazil, France, Turkey, Argentina, Canada and more.

Jones-Perry could feel the quality of the squad in her first practice with the team. Putting so many high-level pros on the same squad is a "rarity" on overseas teams, she said.

Because teams only have a certain budget to use on starters, they typically fill out the roster with youngsters they're hoping to develop.

"[Overseas] the practice level isn't always super high," Jones-Perry explained. "Whereas here, I am competing and grinding against really high-level players every single day. It's a place where I know I'm getting better every day at practice. Every match we play, it's a scrap."

Many of the American players have competed abroad for years. The opportunity to play before friends and family for the first time as professionals was a major selling point to joining LOVB.

Washington, who competed in Italy from 2017 to 2024, said anytime her family wanted to come see her play, they'd have to take on a 30-hour travel day. But now, playing close to where she grew up in Colorado has been "awesome," she reports.

For Poulter, having friends and family in the stands has been special because, "it's not just bringing me joy, but for them to get to share in another piece of my career and my journey in this way has been really cool," she said.

Facing off against players who were her teammates on the national team, or who she faced in college, has been "a treat" for Poulter, who said that Salt Lake has been her first home as an adult in America.

"It's really cool to be a part of something where you can see that everyone is so dedicated and cares, and it makes you want to pull the best out of each other and also be each other's biggest cheerleaders," Poulter said.

Spreading the LOVB
While 2025 marked the inaugural season for the LOVB Pro League, this isn't the first time there's been an effort to start a women's volleyball league in the United States.

The Pro Volleyball Federation (PVF) started in 2024 and follows a more traditional model where its eight franchises are owned by individual operators (Jason Derulo is a part-owner of the Omaha Supernovas). PVF also holds a draft for graduating college players each season.

LOVB franchises, on the other hand, are owned by the league itself, so player salaries for all teams are paid by the league. Many of the future roster composition questions—like how player trades, drafting players from college and adding pros from other leagues will work—are still up in the air.

PVF's focus is less on star power compared to LOVB (one of the cofounders, Gao, says that they're building LOVB to be "akin to the NBA of volleyball"). Instead, the goal is to provide a path to professional competition for the scores of high-level college players in the United States.

In that same Associated Press interview, Gao said there's room for the two leagues to operate simultaneously.

"There's a lot of baseball in different leagues. There's a lot of basketball," she said. "I don't think (NBA commissioner) Adam Silver ever gets questioned, 'What do you think about you butting up against the three-on-threes and all the other start-up leagues?' I think the reality is when it's an extremely popular sport, the more people who watch it and the more people who consume it and participate in it, it's a rising tide."

There's also Athletes Unlimited, the longest standing league of the bunch, which launched in 2021 and operates women's basketball and softball leagues in addition to volleyball. The leagues feature player executive committees that oversee the rules and are in charge of recruiting new players each season.

The league runs for five weeks in one location and the teams are redrafted each week. Athletes Unlimited primarily runs in October, so players can compete in LOVB or PVF in the spring (LOVB Salt Lakers Dani Drews and Tori Dixon are on Athletes Unlimited's 2025 player executive committee).

LOVB is trying to "ride the wave" of growing popularity in women's sports over the last few years, Washington said, pointing to the success of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), the National Women's Soccer League and the Professional Women's Hockey League as examples that volleyball can emulate.

Part of LOVB's founding athletes' responsibilities is to be ambassadors for the game, Washington stressed.

"I feel very honored and privileged that I get to carry this torch and this baton," she said. "But it's also been a struggle, because volleyball doesn't quite have the popularity that it has overseas here in the States."

Washington and her fellow founding athletes have led the charge to "bridge the gap of confusion" for fans who think all of this pro volleyball is happening in one big league.

"It wasn't my idea to have three volleyball leagues, okay? I'm sorry," she says with a laugh.

Laying Roots
While having multiple leagues may be a lot to take in for fans, it speaks to the growing popularity of the sport in the United States. With the Utah High School Athletics Association sanctioning boys' volleyball beginning in 2023 and the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles on the horizon, it stands to reason that trajectory will continue both in Utah and across the country.

As far as the future of LOVB is concerned, the league will take a look at giving the franchises their own specific branding and has aspirations to find a permanent home for the team beyond the Bruin Arena.

Jones-Perry admitted when she first heard about the effort to get LOVB off the ground, she was hesitant. "There's been tries in the past," she pointed out.

But seeing the quality of the players and facilities and the turnout at matches, and her conversations with the league have made her feel like LOVB was something she could really believe in. She said she has to remind herself to pause and take in what an incredible opportunity it is to be able to have dinner with her sisters every Sunday while playing the sport she loves at the highest level.

"There are a lot of moments of being overseas and having one of those long weeks where I was like, 'Imagine if I was just waking up in my house every day and going and grinding at volleyball but I had more of that life balance,'" Jones-Perry said. "It was really exciting to know that could be a potential reality, and now here I am in the middle of it. It's been amazing."

For Jones-Perry, Poulter, Washington and the entire team, perhaps the most important thing has been creating a legacy for the sport among the next generation of players. Washington admonished fans to not let the wave pass them by.

"You have an opportunity to be a part of history," Washington observed. "Volleyball is going to be the next big thing. People want it. It's here. So come be a part of history."

The LOVB playoffs are scheduled to be held April 10 to 13 at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky, with the matches available for streaming on ESPN+ and ESPN2.