The 18-year-olds final at the last year's Volleyball Festival Championships at the Phoenix Convention Center.

Approximately 5,800 girls from 11 states and five countries will be participating in one of the larger volleyball tournaments in the world this week at the Phoenix Convention Center.

The 29th Annual Volleyball Festival Championships, which features 550 teams of girls in seven age divisions from 12 to 18 years old, starts Tuesday evening, June 26, with a welcoming ceremony at Chase Field. The competition starts the following morning at 8 a.m. and continues through Sunday, July 1. The age division championships will be played on Saturday, June 30, culminating with the 18-year-old age group title game at 7 p.m.

A Special Olympics volleyball competition will take place on Wednesday and Thursday and a Kids Zone is open all week, featuring four inflatables (bounce house, slide, obstacle course, and boxing ring), half-court basketball, mini volleyball, video games, movies, and coloring. U.S. Olympian Beach Volleyball Gold Medalist Misty May-Treanor will appear on Thursday at the Phoenix Convention Center to speak and sign autographs.

All activities are open to the public. Tickets range from daily prices of $8 for adults and $5 for children to packages priced at $35 to $50. For more information about the Volleyball Festival, click here. — Dan Barr

A little over a year ago, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion before the Women Law Students’ Association at Arizona State University. The panel that preceded mine featured Judge Mary Schroeder of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch of the Arizona Supreme Court. Judge Schroeder was the first woman to become a partner in a major Phoenix law firm in 1975 and was the first, and to date only, woman to serve as chief judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

After the two judges finished their presentation and started to accept questions from the audience, a law student asked what the major differences were today for young female lawyers starting their careers, as opposed to the 1970s.  Judge Schroeder had an immediate response.

“Team sports. Young women today have participated in team sports in high school and in college. They understand teamwork, competition and dealing with success and failure much better. It makes a huge difference to lawyers working in a law firm if they have played team sports.”

This Saturday is the 40th anniversary of Title IX.  The year before Title IX was enacted, the same year the Judge Schroeder started work as an associate at the law firm of Lewis and Roca, there were about 310,000 girls and women in the U.S. playing high school and college sports. Today, there are almost 3.4 million. Few laws have had as pervasive an impact on our society during the last two generations as Title IX.

In a well done opinion piece in today’s New York Times, Allen Barra reminds us that we should thank Richard Nixon for signing Title IX.

“It’s almost certain that Nixon signed it into law without considering the potential impact on women’s athletics,” Barra writes. “After all, he had other things on his mind; six days before, five men had been arrested breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex. Talk about anniversaries.” — Dan Barr

Needless to say, Coach Kloidt has been able to recruit some of the best lacrosse players in the country to come to Hamilton.  It is a good guess that most, if not all, the girls who have played at Hamilton during the past few years have enjoyed much success in multiple sports during their youth, high school and college athletic careers.

So as I walked through Hamilton’s new athletic facility last Saturday morning, I came upon the bulletin board for the women’s lacrosse team just down the hall from where their national championship trophy is displayed.  In addition to notes about practice schedules and conditioning, there was this note from Coach Kloidt to her players.  It is a message that is valuable for boys and girls of any age in any sport.  Indeed, it is a message that transcends sports and is a good reminder for all of us in whatever we do. — Dan Barr