August 2020 - Center for Emerging Media Design and Development

Rise of the Award-Winning Match Point Project

“This transmedia project matters because we are shedding light on a topic that has a lot of misconceptions, like that volleyball is a girls’ sport. I hope we inspire the next generation of young athletes to become interested in playing volleyball, and that one day, some of those kids get to represent the USA at the Olympics.”

Rachel Edwards

Documentary Trailer Views

Social Media Impressions

Podcast Streams

Project Awards and Recognition

Match Point: The Rise of Men’s Volleyball is now an award winning documentary! This film took home an award of excellence at the Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts. Along with the film, the Match Point Transmedia Campaign won the honor of second place in the entire festival for interactive media. The festival had a record year with over 1,700 entries.

In the spring of 2020, Match Point: The Rise of Men’s Volleyball was nominated for an Emmy award in the directing non-live film category. Check out the official trailer here.

The Match Point Project tells the important story of the growing need for boy’s and men’s volleyball and the impact a sport can have on an athlete’s life. Throughout the project, students collaborated with Kerri Walsh Jennings (4x Olympian, 3x Olympic Gold Medalist), Micah Christenson (USA Men’s Volleyball, American Volleyball Coaches Association), Lloy Ball (4x Olympian, Olympic Gold Medalist, NCAA Volleyball), Casey Patterson (USA Beach Volleyball Olympian), and Stafford Slick (AVP Beach Volleyball Champion). These collaborative discussions make up the podcast, social media posts, and blog content.

The Transmedia Campaign

The Match Point transmedia campaign is responsible for promoting and extending the mission of the Match Point documentary. The film explores opportunities for minority and underserved communities within volleyball, which is the fastest growing boys’ and men’s sport in the U.S. The transmedia campaign consists of four main storytelling components: a mobile game app, a website, a podcast, and a social media campaign.

The Match Point website is the main hub for the campaign that allows users to explore photo galleries, movie trailers, blog posts, and other elements to learn more about boys’ and men’s volleyball. Match Point: The Game is a weekly pick’em confidence league app that engages users by encouraging active participation in the men’s volleyball collegiate season. The Match Point podcast, Aces Only, is a bi-weekly podcast featuring one-on-one interviews with prominent athletes, sports influencers, and coaches connected to boys’ and men’s volleyball. Match Point can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—the social media campaign goes beyond telling stories of individual people and expands on the storyworld through sports trivia, history, and behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the documentary.

The team behind the award-winning transmedia campaign includes Parker Swartz, Rachel Edwards, Erin Drennan-Bonner, Elijah Yarde, and Jacob Newell, led by Dr. Jennifer Palilonis. “The thing I love about this project is that there are so many unique stories to tell, and we’ve been able to incorporate so many different platforms into the campaign to tell those stories,” said Parker Swartz, who is not only on the transmedia team but also the director and executive producer of the documentary. The transmedia team members did not all step into this project with a background in boys’ and men’s volleyball and learned everything they needed to along the way. Elijah Yarde, Match Point’s web designer, said, “I knew nothing about volleyball, and far less about men’s volleyball. It’s been insightful learning a totally brand new subject then applying and using that knowledge in a meaningful way.”