Pretty amazing. But then again he was the best volleyball player in the country in high school. Must be nice to become a multimillionaire in 7 years, retire and then pursue your passion all the was way to the Olympics
Surprised he only managed to hang around for 7 years. Looking at BRef he really fell off near the end.
He could have played longer - he had zero motivation. Chase has had an amazing life. He grew up in San Diego on the beach. He naturally did well in school with little effort. He was a McDonald's All American in high school - a top 5 prospect in his class. He won several state championships in high school basketball and I think he won it every year in high school for volleyball. He was the Western Division high school basketball player of the year as a senior and was the #1 ranked volleyball player in the country and won National player of the year. He went to college and could have been a lottery pick after one year but decided to stick around 3. He got drafted, played for like 5-6 years for tends of millions of dollars and retired before 30. Now he plays professional volleyball for a living. He also dates beautiful women. The guy was born with amazing gifts and abilities .
Always got the feeling volleyball was his actual passion, or closer to it. Volleyball is far less competitive than the NBA in terms of talent pool, and has a far lighter schedule. Good for him.
Off Bud topic... I was talking to someone the other day about how I can't believe we don't have boys volleyball in Texas HS. She said that Willis HS has a team, but it's an anomaly. I started playing volleyball when I got to college and got into USVBA competition. It's a really great game and I don't understand in 2024 why it's not become more mainstream for boys growing up.
Same thing here, Texas does girls volleyball at the same time as football and act like they couldn't have boys volleyball at the same time. It's weird because it's a great sport I played in HS.
Still remember the days when we had him as a starter and Chandler on the bench. That's also part of the reason why Chase Budinger got traded later - because we got Chandler Bang!
Club volleyball for girls can be costly if a player is on a good travel team. I know somebody that had two daughters playing Club volleyball at the same time and he said that his profits from Rental properties were going mostly to pay for Club volleyball. For some youth sports such as soccer, baseball, softball etc, outside venues aren't as difficult to schedule compared to what AAU basketball and Club volleyball have to go through. In certain High School sports, the presence or lack of players that played Club in the offseason is usually a good predictor of what to expect for a High School team. Sometimes local TV Sports reporters will marvel at how a relatively new school in an affluent suburb is going to state in Girls volleyball. The TV reporters want to attribute the success to good coaching in High School when the reality is that the team has a roster heavy on good Club players that should do well as long as the High School coach doesn't screw it up. Perhaps that holds true for High School Soccer as well, but that is a sport that I am not as familiar with. Now back on track about volleyball for young men in Texas... Until there is a decent grassroots program to start developing players pre High School, I think that it is going to a struggle to accomplish much.
