Kate Nolan

Professor Campbell
UWRT
October 23, 2014
The Pyramid
Part I: Observations
The group assembles at the Student Activity Center twice a week, on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, for two hour long practices. The girls walk into the gym with normal
sneakers or athletic sandals on and then change into court shoes and kneepads once they
get there. They all wear spandex, a tee shirt, court shoes, kneepads, and ankle high socks
and have their hair tied up. When they arrive they sit in about five different groups and
talk until they are instructed to begin. The groups that they sit in are divided between
newer players and older players. They each grab a partner and start warming up with each
other by passing the ball to each other then peppering. This can be described as two
people standing a good distance apart and proceeding to pass, set, and then hit the ball at
each other over and over again. This warm up lasts for about fifteen minutes. Then the
president of the club calls everyone together and explains the next drill. Several different
drills are done over the course of the next 45 minutes with a water break at the end of
each drill. The gold team is on one side of the court and the green team is on the other
side. The black and the white teams stand on the sidelines observing and getting the balls
that go off the court. Before they disperse for water, the girls gather together in a circle at
the end of each drill. Bring it in everyone, the president of the club announces. All of
the teams come together and do a chant where they just cheer Charlotte! then break.

The last 30 minutes of practice are spent conditioning. First they ran and did sprints. Next
they did abdominal exercises and then a series of squats. The president and vice president
of the club led these exercises; they stood in front of the group and demonstrated each
work out. They would do sets of three then pause for a quick break and then start a new
set of exercises all over again. At the end of practice all of the girls take off their
kneepads and change into the shoes they came in wearing. While the girls are changing
they sit in a circle and the president talks about upcoming tournaments and what they
need to do to prepare for them. When she is finished talking the girls gather together and
chant CHARLOTTE! on the count of three. Then everyone is dismissed and heads
home. At the end I interviewed a player from each of the teams and the president of the
club.
Part II: Interpretation
Society can be defined as an organized group of persons associated together for
religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. For my
mini-ethnography, the society I chose to observe was UNC Charlottes Womens Club
Volleyball team. This Club team is particularly interesting because it consists of a
hierarchy, similar to multiple world societies. There are about 40 members of the club
team but each member is placed into a different level, which could be considered a subgroup. It could be thought of as a pyramid. At the bottom there is the black team, which
is composed of players who just get to practice with the team but are not full members
that get to play at tournaments. Continuing this trend there is the white team, made up of
players who are substitutes in case of an incident occurs where a player got injured and
they need someone to take their position. Going up on the pyramid, there is the green

then the gold team. These teams get to attend and play in the tournaments and are full
members on either team. The green team is constituted of mainly underclassmen while
the gold is upperclassmen. My main focus in writing this ethnography is to study how
each member of the sub-groups interact with one another and how every player joins
together as a whole, although they may be in a different level of the pyramid.
I refer to this society in the sense of a pyramid because throughout history, many
societies have used this vision of social hierarchy to organize their members of society.
Such as in ancient India, the caste system was divided into a societal pyramid, which the
worst members of society were placed at the bottom and looked down upon.
Contrarily, the best members of society were looked up to and held their position at the
top of the pyramid. While in Indias pyramid organization of society each member had to
be born into their position, the UNCC Club Volleyball team is based off of skill. Also, it
is different because you can move between each level while in India where you are born
is where you stay, there is no possibility in moving up or down in society. The team holds
try-outs in the beginning of each semester where a perspective player is judged on skill
and performance by existing members of the team, then new members are placed into the
group in which they would best fit. Once a potential member finds out that they have
made the cut for one of the teams, they have to pay a fee. The same fee is paid no matter
if you are a player who is just permitted to attend practice or if you are the star player on
the Gold team who plays at every tournament and receives a new uniform. Although in
the volleyball society, all members in theory should be treated as equals since they all
have paid the same dues, my observations proved differently. The bottom of the pyramid,
the black team, is the last priority when it comes to participating in drills and getting time

practicing on the court. While the gold, green and white team participated in a
scrimmage; the black team stood on the sidelines and shagged the balls. A vocabulary
word often used on any volleyball team is shag which can be defined as the act of
collecting the balls being played out and returning them back into the ball cart. I
continuously observed this behavior of the black team constantly shagging the balls while
the rest of the members got to practice their skills playing out other drills besides the
scrimmages. The girls on the black team reminded me of a ball girl at any sporting event,
who are solely there to benefit the team and not themselves by collecting the balls for the
team. It seems like there purpose there is to do jobs that no one else wants to do, kind of
like the untouchables (the lowest level of the Indian caste system). They were clearly
looked at in a much lesser view than the girls who got to play and participate in the drills.
I interviewed one of the girls on the black team and asked her what benefits do
you get from being apart of this club?
She replied that she was not playing on the team to be apart of the competitive
aspect that the girls who get to travel to tournaments experience. But she continued to go
to every practice because I just love the sport so much. She continued to say it
doesnt matter to me that I dont get to go to the games with the rest of the girls, I just
love playing volleyball and the time I do get to practice I have so much fun and am just
trying to improve my skills. I think that if I keep working hard and attending practices,
the girls will see my continued effort and eventually Ill get to play with them on the
actual team. But until then Im just having fun playing. I would have never guessed that
her response would be so positive. On the outside looking in, if I was in the same position
as her on the black team I would not be willing to pay the fee just to practice for fun.

The response was unexpected but refreshing to see although she knows she is in a lower
level of the team she still has the same passion as any other member.
Since the team is a strictly female team there are difference in personal and social
interaction than there would be in a co-ed society. Females tend to be more involved in
their cliques while men are more likely to be friendlier towards everyone. Each subdivision can be looked as a clique because they all tend to stay together and have closer
relationships with the individuals in their specific cliques. I surveyed a member of the
white team and proposed the question how do you think the relationship is between the
team as a whole? She responded by saying,
Playing wise, I think the team works well together on the court. There is great
communication between everyone, which is why we are so successful. But honestly, off
the court Im not quiet sure I could name everyone. Just because of the fact that there are
separate teams and they usually stay together, so you basically get to know the people on
your color team better than the team as a whole. So separately divided into each team the
relationship is great, but as a whole not so much. Some of us are still strangers to those
outside of our teams. With such a big group it is easy to see that it is probably difficult
for each member to know everyone individually on a personal level but the team does
separate themselves in ways that this problem is inevitable. From my perspective, it
seems as if members of the lower teams arent as likely to start a conversation off the
court during breaks with a member of a higher team because they feel intimidated. It
might seem like an action that is out of place in their society. This is similar to in many
Asian cultures where it is seen as unacceptable to talk to a figure that is older or in a
higher position.

Members of the gold and green teams can be compared to the older and wiser
authority figures since they have more experience and have played longer. Since the
youngest and newest members are on the white and black teams they look up to the other
girls as being in a higher position to them and might feel that it is not acceptable to talk to
the older girls. This reminds me of the movie Mean Girls. Its a classical example of a
society divided into different groups. When Kady moves to a new school she is
introduced to all of the different cliques when Janet brings her into the lunchroom and
shows her around. You got your... Freshmen, ROTC guys, preps, J.V. jocks, Asian
nerds, cool Asians, varsity jocks, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings,
girls who don't eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks,
the greatest people you will ever meet and the worst: Beware of plastics. The plastics are
the most popular girls in the school who hold the most power socially. Thus showing that
every society, whether it being either an Indian caste system or just a student body of
high school students, follows the same basic social pyramid, much like the one on the
club volleyball team.
UNC Charlottes womens club volleyball team has the basic aspects that any
society would. It has a set meeting time twice a week to engage in two hours of practice
each day and set tournament dates on the weekends. At practice the girls all wear
spandex, tee shirts, high socks, kneepads and court shoes with their hair tied up. They can
all be identified as volleyball players just by what they are wearing even walking to
practice when they are not together as a whole. But at tournaments they all have the same
jerseys on which separates them from the other teams. At the end of each drill before they
go for a water break everyone comes together in a circle with their arms in the air and

chants Charlotte on the count of 3. This ritual is also done at the end of each practice
before everyone leaves. I view it as a since of unity and pride since they all come together
and cheer their school name. They are proud to be apart of the team and everyone else in
the gym knows it when they do this chant. Similarly, other actions of cheering are done
when someone gets a block or an ace. A block is a defensive play by one or more front
row players meant to deflect a spiked ball back to the hitter's court. When this occurs, all
6 players on the court come together in a circle and wave both arms up, imitating the
blocking motion and making a woosh sounding noise. An ace is a serve, which lands in
the opponent's court without being touched, or is touched, but unable to be kept in play
by one or more receiving team players, resulting n the serving team receiving a point and
getting the ball back. When this occurs everyone once again comes together on the court
and says Ah-Ace! simultaneously while joining together in a circle and wrapping their
arms around the teammates next to them creating a huddle. Then on the sidelines the girls
say the same chant all together directly after the girls on the court do. Cheering keeps the
team motivated and shows the other teams the confidence that they have. Other forms of
communication the girls have with each other are during the actual game. The hitters
have to communicate with the setter by telling them where they want their set on the net
by yelling out the name of the set. Communication is key in volleyball, like any other
sport. If the players did not all communicate with each other then nobody would know
what was going on and they would not be successful. The group values teamwork and
communication, which are two fundamentals of volleyball.
In the larger community of UNC Charlotte, the club volleyball team is seen as an
extra circular activity. They define themselves as an important group on campus by

having a good reputation by going out and winning tournaments. I asked a player what
they thought of their reputation on campus and she replied since we have a decent
record and have placed well at our tournaments I think we have gained a decent amount
of respect among the other club sports.
Its peers and other schools respect UNC Charlottes club volleyball team. They
are composed of many different players with different skill levels and can be organized
into a social hierarchy. Different methods of communication and specific language are
two aspects that set them apart from the rest of society. They have set meeting times and
a shared set of beliefs. Everyone is there for a mutual purpose: to play a sport theyre
passionate about. The amount of passion these girls have is amazing and the chemistry
they create on the court flows off the court into friendships off the court as well. Four of
the players are even roommates because they built such a great relationship with each
other last season. This team demonstrates the behavior of a typical society. Through
observing this group I can tell that there are definitely differences between each team but
everyone is content with where they are at because theyre there for the same reason: to
have fun playing volleyball.