The Rise of LAVA
by G. Dias
The Los Angeles Volleyball Association (LAVA) was formed in early 2010. Volleyball enthusiasts and long time friends, Gustavo Dias and Ray Robles co-founded LAVA along with Juan Salcido, Hunter Haliniak, Tyler Padayao, and Jay Ward. By that time, players had several options for open gym, but the group felt that Los Angeles lacked a league format in which formal teams would compete every week in a set schedule.
It was not until we lost Tuesday Night Gym in West Hollywood to the dodgeball league that we got together and decided to organize ourselves a league of our own.
With the assistance of Ron Carter we were able to run the first season of the LAVA league on Friday nights at Hollywood High School. It was then that current board member, Filippo Vaccari, joined LAVA and brought forth his excitement and ambition to the organization. The popularity of LAVA was quickly growing among volleyball players in LA having completed LAVA’s first successful league which ran for three months in two divisions (intermediate and advanced). But that accomplishment was just the beginning of new opportunities to LAVA.
Utilizing the great amount of experience Ray had in running tournaments with Metro Beach, a late organization with Aaron Castillo, he began to lay the framework to expand the services offered by LAVA. Ray led the LAVA group into running a couple of one-day tournaments which we call Ocean Front Challenges.
On April 2011 with the sanction of the North American Gay Volleyball Association (NAGVA), LAVA hosted its first two –day tournament in the beautiful city of Santa Barbara! The welcoming campus of UCSB provided a fantastic venue for LAVA to host this inaugural event with a sports center containing seven courts. The tournament was such a big hit among the athletes who attended that the tournament will be taking place again at UCSB in April 2012.
It is the intention of LAVA to continue to provide more one and two-day tournaments, developmental skill workshops and the second season of the league in its growing future.
To aid the organization in its mission of growing and providing services to the community, Eric Gonzales joined the LAVA team in May 2011 and was the catalyst in transforming LAVA into a bona fide non-profit organization recognized by the State of California.
The entire team is proud of its new formation as a non-profit organization which is a testament of the team’s drive, hard work and dedication to the sport of volleyball for our community.
Our upcoming events include the Ocean Front Challenge III on August 7th in Santa Monica at Memorial Park and our first outdoor tournament Ocean Front Grass Challenge 4X4 on September 25th also in Santa Monica.
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