El Camino Reinstates Men’s Intercollegiate Volleyball

After a two-year layoff, El Camino College will have men’s intercollegiate volleyball again. The schedule starts Feb. 20 and the Warriors will compete in the new South Coast Conference.

The program will be run by Coach Paul Viggiano, a former track star at El Camino. The Redondo Beach resident, now in the master’s of divinity program at Talbot Theological Seminary, attended El Camino in 1975 and earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education at Cal State Long Beach. He has coached volleyball at South Torrance High School, Redondo High School and Cypress College, and coached a club team, Redsand Volleyball, to a second-place national finish.

Athletic Director James Schwartz said the sport was dropped because of budget cuts and lack of competition. He cited “an extreme need” and the formation of the new conference as reasons for reinstating volleyball. The South Bay is a hotbed of youth volleyball and Schwartz noted that high school graduates “need a place to continue to play in hope of receiving a scholarship to a four-year institution.”

He added, “When El Camino dropped volleyball there were only five or six other Southern California community colleges that kept their programs. Now all the schools are making an effort to get more men’s volleyball programs reinstated.”

El Camino will open Feb. 20 at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. The South Coast Conference has five other community colleges--Golden West, Pierce, Long Beach City, Mt. San Antonio and Orange Coast--and three small four-year schools, Cal Lutheran, Westmont College in Santa Barbara and the University of La Verne.

Schwartz said a men’s volleyball team class will be offered on Tuesday evenings.