Olympic volleyball champion Micha Hancock wants to pay it forward to the next generation: 'This is what the sport could be'
As the reigning Olympic champs begin their FIVB Road to Paris Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Poland, Hancock reflects on her pro career abroad as she eyes bringing a league to life in the U.S.
Volleyball
As 92,000 fans set a world record for the biggest crowd to ever attend a women’s sporting event last month in Lincoln, Nebraska, Micha Hancock was watching from afar with “full body chills.”
It was her sport – volleyball – that had drawn the crowd, and for the Team USA Olympic gold medallist it was a moment that encapsulated much more than just a statistic in the history books.
“This sport means so much to us and we’re helping lay the path [for the future] now,” Hancock told Olympics.com. “But there are so many before us that have laid the path and it's really cool to see it unravelling. We're showing young girls that this is what the sport could be here in America. And I'm really excited to continue to do that.”
To say that volleyball has given Hancock her own life path is an understatement. Her first trip abroad at the age of 17 was for the Youth Olympic Games Singapore 2010 (“I was dumbfounded,” she says of the experience), and for much of the last eight years the American has lived overseas in Puerto Rico, Poland, and Italy – all to play professional volleyball.
But she’s also set out to grow the sport to levels it’s never seen before in her home country, and is part of an effort to bring a professional women’s league to the U.S. following next year’s Olympics at Paris 2024.
The Games are no small matter, either: The American women’s team looks to defend its gold from Tokyo 2020 in 2021 and begins that process in earnest starting Saturday (16 September 2023) at one of the FIVB Road to Paris Olympic Qualifier events in Poland.
With various end goals in sight, Hancock is conscious she’s on “paid time:” Enjoying what she does for a living – each and every day.
“I still love this game so much,” Hancock said. “It’s giving back to myself what I’ve been given in this sport. It’s this continuous, reciprocal cycle. And I get to show young girls what this life can look like and how you can do it better. I’m really trying to relish in one more year overseas and then come home and see what America [can do].”
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA - AUGUST 30: General view of the court during the game between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Omaha Mavericks at Memorial Stadium on August 30, 2023 in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Photo by Steven Branscombe/Getty Images)
Micha Hancock: Volleyball as a global game
It’s estimated that some 400 American women head abroad to play volleyball professionally overseas, one of the main contributing factors to Hancock’s help in imagining a new pro league in the U.S.
Yet the 30-year-old has been shaped by her time as a global citizen, something she feels has benefitted her as both a person and an Olympic athlete: “You have to get really comfortable in your own skin,” she said.
“You get a lot of time to yourself,” Hancock continued of life abroad. “You get to learn about yourself a lot, journal and take in each experience for what it is. But it also expands your world, expands you culturally, and it can do a lot of really good things for you in life.”
Hancock has picked up techniques along the way: She does breathing exercises and writes in her journal “quite a bit.” Therapy has been “pretty powerful,” she says, and recommends if an athlete doesn’t go then they should seek out a mentor.
“[Athletes] can feel isolated” especially overseas, she explained. “And I think once we share those things with someone else then we're able to take it on together.”
Olympic champion – thinking beyond the podium
After just one loss in pool play, Team USA swept nine out of nine sets played in three knockout rounds at the Tokyo Games, beating Brazil in the gold medal match 3-0.
“I remember our national anthem playing and I just could not hold it in,” Hancock said of their podium moment. “I was just crying for the whole thing. I was so proud of what we had done. ... I thought of who's come before us, [and that] we were the first [U.S. women’s team to win a] gold medal. It's so much more than just the group on the podium. It was a full circle moment for me.”
The constant reflection around those that came before her and the ones she will pass the baton on to is part of Hancock’s conscious effort as she moves into the veteran stage of her career.
“I'm realising, ‘Oh my God, I'm 30, I'm a vet! Where do the years go?’” she laughed. “Those women [before me] are so valuable – and not just for volleyball. I just want to give the sport back what it’s given me. And so that's to pour into the girls that come after me.”
That’s where the idea for LOVB (just pronounced “love”), the pro league, has come from, too: What will the next generation of American female volleyball players have to dream about?
Hancock is one of eight founding athletes for the league.
“There definitely is a market for it,” Hancock said. “I'm excited for its sustainability and just to be a part of it. We’ve got to do it right so that it sticks, but I really think that this could be the one.”
That approach asks a certain work ethic – on and off the court. It’s a value base Hancock recognises in herself as an Olympian.
“I think being an Olympian means to be resilient and to never give up on what you want,” she said, continuing: “Never giving up on what your dreams are. And to look around and be connected to who's around you and, you know, let it rip. There's some freedom in not knowing what's going to happen. It’s a beautiful thing in sport. It's like, let's go be vulnerable together.”
‘Ready to rip it off at the hinges’
The U.S. finds itself in Pool C for The Road to Paris Volleyball Qualifier, with action set for 16-24 September in Lodz, Poland. The top two teams in each pool (there are three pools of eight) will gain a qualification spot for Paris 2024.
Team USA is joined by hosts Poland, as well as Italy, Germany, Thailand, Colombia, Republic of Korea, and Slovenia.
While eight members from the Tokyo 2020 squad are headed to Lodz (including Hancock as well as Tokyo MVP Jordan Larson, who has not suited up for the U.S. since the Games), it’s “not the same,” Micha explains.
“We’re finding our groove as a team and I think we need to have a little patience,” she said. “There is a lot of comparison to Tokyo and it's like, ‘Hey, that's the past, right?’ It was amazing... but also, this is a new group of people and this is a new puzzle to solve. I think we're still working on how that puzzle fits and what the solutions are to winning a battle.”
Hancock says the key in the qualifier is going to be playing with “freedom,” and that the team has “another level to unlock.”
There are still Paris dreams, admits Hancock, who said she’s most excited for getting to share the Olympic experience with friends and family who were unable to go to Tokyo due to the Covid pandemic restrictions.
And perhaps some added on-court success, too.
“I think about getting there and having a team that is ready to just rip it off at the hinges,” she said, smiling. “And that just like really instils this hope in me.”