By Richard Campbell
Undaunted by the heat, and perhaps creating some heat themselves, Social Boston Sports drew a large group of players for their coed Beach Volleyball Tournament on Carson Beach this past Saturday, July 28th. Teams were formed in 6 versus 6, 4 versus 4 coed groupings and started around 2:00 pm in the bright sun, with some players looking like seasoned pros and others just showing for the fun of it. The tournament winners in the 6V6 category were Ric Flairs Woo’s! and the 4V4 winners were the Green Monkeys.
Perhaps you’ve seen this group playing volleyball at Carson over the summer and wondered who they are? Social Sports has grown over the years from its humble beginnings in Baltimore of 16 members to its national company size of 125,000 members in 8 cities featuring amateur sports of all kinds: including volleyball, softball, soccer, yoga, kickball, flag football, and various forms of fitness. They have a dedicated mission to provide sports for kids in their host cities and are well on their way to becoming a national phenomenon.
With funky names like Sweet Boys, Scrappy, We Dig Ball, Kill It, and Green Monkeys, I’m not saying there’s a lot of advertising genius in the identities, but there was a high participation rate and vigor from teams all around Boston. As competition heated up players contorted themselves in every position to conquer the ball and out-play their opponents. Diving into the sand, jumping high in defense over the net, setting up shots, and delivering knock out spikes, proved the teams were pretty physically fit. As the sweat started building and players flexed their muscles bearing their shirts under the hot sun, the team’s main sponsor, Red Bull, provided drinks, along others including Purity & REBBL drinks, Kind protein bars. Matt Kennedy from the American Cancer Society was on hand promoting breast cancer awareness and handing out pink bling, as the live DJ and Red Bull player’s tent added a little shade and sound to the event.
The Social Sports organization as a 501c non-profit has made its mission to provide sports for kids ages 6-12 to play variety of sports for free. They’ve branded their movement Volo City, a name that comes from their original bocce ball team that kick started their organization, and their Volo City Foundation (http://www. volocityfoundation.org/) provides free athletic skills training for kids as well as other services.
Volo City Kids started in 2015 and continues to build activities for kids, starting in Baltimore and branching out to NYC, Washington DC, Boston, Denver, and San Francisco. With 3,500 kids registered for free athletics, and 700 volunteers running events, this is an organization on the move. Social Boston Sports (http://socialbostonsports. com/) has a presence in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Everett, and some towns beyond.
Registration is still open for more volleyball teams if you have a group interested in joining. Their next event the first Greenway Sweat Crawl, is August 12th, 11:30 am to 2:00 pm, and looks to take over the Greenway with physical fitness obsessed participants sweating it out.
