Photograph courtesy of the Pro Volleyball Federation
The women’s pro volleyball team Atlanta Vibe started its second season in January, and it really is a vibe.
On a cold winter night in early 2025, the team took to the court surrounded by fans and a remarkable hype machine that was hard to resist. The Vibe’s third home match of the season ended with a win over the Las Vegas Thrill in the fourth set.
Duluth’s Gas South Arena was below capacity, but that didn’t dampen the excitement of the fans. Led by the indefatigable chants and exhortations of Mamie Keith Garard, they were all in. Garard, 25, is the team’s in-arena announcer. She’s a retired professional volleyball player and now does stunt work in film and TV.
“I always say I have the best job in the world,” Garard says. “I am given three to four hours every night to be my most obnoxious, loud, and energetic self. And they make my job easy. I’ve always been someone that has 10 times more energy than anyone else in the room.”
The Vibe is one of eight teams in the Pro Volleyball Federation, a women’s professional league that launched in January 2024. The new league reflects a recent explosion of growth for American professional volleyball, which struggled for decades to attract investment and fans. Most of this newfound growth is on the women’s side: The PVF is now one of three professional women’s leagues in the United States, with a fourth set to launch in 2026.
With fans demonstrating their enthusiasm—the PVF has an average attendance of nearly 5,000 per game, and millions more viewers tune in on YouTube—investors finally seem ready to put their money into women’s pro volleyball. The PVF was backed in part by NFL players, among them current Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow and retired Ravens quarterback Trent Dilfer; Dilfer’s daughter, Tori, plays pro volleyball. Meanwhile, singer Jason Derulo financially backed the PVF’s Omaha Supernovas.
Investors in the Atlanta Vibe include four-time NBA All-Star Paul Millsap, Olympic gold medal hurdler Edwin Moses, and beach volleyball legend Sinjin Smith.
While the PVF is currently the largest league across the women’s pro volleyball field, competition is rising: Major League Volleyball, a league set to launch next January, has more than $100 million in committed funding.
Professional volleyball’s rapid growth is driven partly by its rocketing popularity at the high school level. According to recent data from the National Federation of State High School Associations, nearly 500,000 American girls play on a high school volleyball team, making it the second most-played girls’ sport behind track and field, outpacing soccer, basketball, and softball.
That growth, in turn, may be fueled by the enormous popularity of the USA Volleyball Women’s National Team, which has scored a medal at every Olympics event since 2008. Kayla Banwarth, 36, head coach of the Atlanta Vibe, was part of the United States’ bronze medal–winning team at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. “I’ve been playing volleyball my entire life,” says Banwarth. “It was always my No. 1 passion. That’s in part because my parents played, and they both coached as well. You could say it’s in my blood.”
From the beginning, the PVF’s founders made clear their intention to make pro volleyball a viable career option for their players. They promised a base salary of $60,000, comparable to rookie rates in the WNBA. According to the PVF, some players are now making as much as $175,000, plus benefits.
That kind of investment means American talent can now stay closer to home, rather than having to look abroad to further their career. “When I left college, I was heart-set on playing pro, and my only option was to look overseas—Europe, South America,” says Garard, the Vibe announcer. “When the PVF became a thing, I had to get involved, creating opportunities for girls like me to play in front of their families.”
The Vibe’s roster includes Merritt Beason, a six-foot-four Alabama native who was the first overall pick in the league’s 2024 draft. Beason, 22, was a gymnast as a child, but when it became clear that her height would be an issue, she turned to volleyball via the encouragement of a family friend.
These days, young girls are getting that encouragement from the Atlanta Vibe and other pro women’s teams. “Now that younger girls can see that that’s a pathway of life, that they can make a living out of this,” says Beason, “it’s adding to the growth in general.”
This article appears in our April 2025 issue.
