Maryland’s underdogs are volleyball MVPs

But the top boys volleyball players in the state do have one outlet. The Maryland Volleyball Program, generally known as ‘‘MVP”, is the only club league in the state.

Players ranging in age from 9 to 18 compete on one of six teams, starting at Under-12 and finishing at the elite U-18 MVP Red. They travel nine months each year, competing in USA Volleyball Junior Olympic contests locally, regionally and nationally.

Most of the county’s most notable boys players are in MVP. Last season’s Gazette Player of the Year, Damascus coed outside hitter Ryan Mullsteff, is on the program’s top team. So is Sherwood outside hitter Mik Berzins, a key player in the Warrior boys team’s county championship last year. Other players in the MVP include Churchill’s Victor Silva and Andrew Tang, and Seneca Valley’s Patrick Bell.

‘‘Basically, it’s the highest level boys can go in the United States,” Tang said. ‘‘The best teams are usually West Coast teams like Hawaii and California, but that doesn’t exclude us. I think we’re at the top level where we can play with the best.”

MVP has always had strong roots in Montgomery County. In fact, it’s where the program originated. Kennedy’s coed and boys volleyball coaches, Shang and Wanda Hsiung, developed the program in 1985 while Wanda was pregnant with the couple’s first child, Amanda: a Blair graduate who finished a distinguished four-year career at Division I Vassar College (NY) this past fall.

Both Shang and Wanda Hsiung have extensive volleyball backgrounds: Shang coached the University of Maryland men’s club team for 20 years, earning a National Collegiate Club Championship in 1996 and six straight Atlantic Coast Conference titles (1989-1994). Wanda played collegiate volleyball at Maryland, and still competes in USA Volleyball tournaments.

But the goal was to give the boys an opportunity to play the sport competitively, and to get the sport more attention in an area where only girls volleyball had previously thrived.

‘‘You look at it, boys high-school volleyball didn’t even start until 1992; other areas of the country are much more involved,” Wanda Hsiung said. ‘‘West Coast, California, Arizona and the Midwest, there’s much more involvement. We’re very much an underdog when we compete [nationally], but we’ve still had success. In 1992, we finished seventh in the country, which is not something any of the girls teams in the area have done, and we finished 11th one year.”

The Kennedy boys coach notes one big difference between here and different regions of the country: elsewhere, elite-level athletes are encouraged to play volleyball.

For example, University of Arizona sophomore Chase Budinger is a former McDonald’s All-American on the hardwood, as well as one of the finest volleyball players in California prep school history while at La Costa Canyon High.

One would be hard-pressed in this state to find a basketball player of Budinger’s ability bumping or setting in the offseason. Nor are there a large number of year-round club volleyball players in this area. But Sherwood boys coach Aldis Berzins thinks volleyball players, including his three sons, benefit from playing more than one sport.

‘‘It’s funny, the guys were losing focus in practice the other day, and I had them play dodge ball to get their focus back,” Berzins said. ‘‘When you’re younger, especially, I think it’s awesome if you can play two or three sports. You can play basketball and volleyball if you want to.”

Berzins also coaches the MVP Red Team, a nine-man squad that qualified for the USA Junior National Championships last summer, competing with the best teams across the country. His volleyball background is as extensive as anyone’s. A starter on the gold medal-winning 1984 USA Olympic Men’s Volleyball team after being named a two-time Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association Player of the Year (1977, ’78), Berzins has played against the best in the world.

His oldest son, Kris, is a sophomore and starter for Division I Loyola University-Chicago (Ill.), while middle son Mik has committed to play next year at Ohio State, and youngest son Dainis, a sophomore at Sherwood, competes on the MVP-16 team.

MVP has helped players like them get noticed nationally. Berzins’ sons were either noticed or proved themselves in national tournaments. Mullsteff has signed on to follow Kris Berzins to Loyola-Chicago.

They’ve proven that, while volleyball is given more publicity in other parts of the country, they can play just as well.

‘‘We’re just trying to represent for Maryland,” said Aldis Berzins. ‘‘Fear the turtle.”