2/22/2026
So it’s Sunday in the D3 men’s volleyball world, and guys are doing what they always do on Sundays.
They’re checking the schedule.
Not because they’re playing. They almost never play on Sunday. But because somebody is usually playing, and what happens to somebody else matters enormously to you personally. This is the quiet obsession that nobody outside the volleyball community fully understands. You drink your coffee, you open up the schedule, and you start doing math that your actual math professor would be proud of.
“Okay, if Buffalo State beats Messiah, and we already beat Buffalo State, but we lost to that team in the weird green uniforms back in February, then we might move up two spots, unless…” and then your roommate walks in and you look like you’re defusing a bomb.
This is Sunday in D3 men’s volleyball. It’s not about playing. It’s about watching the board shift.
So imagine the moment when a player wakes up, grabs his phone, pulls up the schedule with that familiar mix of hope and anxiety, and sees… nothing. No games. Anywhere. Just a clean, empty Sunday staring back at him like a blank page in a journal he never asked for.
He refreshes it. Still nothing.
He texts three teammates. They confirm. Still nothing.
Now here is the part that really puts it in perspective. This has not happened since January 12th. January 12th. And before you think, oh that was just a few weeks ago, no. January 12th was the first week of the season. The very first week. Before the standings meant anything. Before the rivalries had been renewed. Before anyone had a bad loss to avenge or a close win to protect. The schedule has had something on it every single Sunday since the actual season began, since there were actual stakes, since anybody had any real reason to care what happened to somebody else.
Every Sunday with meaning, somebody played. Somebody won. Somebody lost in five sets and had a very quiet van ride home. And somewhere, a player on a team that wasn’t even there that day picked up his phone and felt either quietly relieved or quietly devastated depending on what the score said.
That is the rhythm. That is the heartbeat of a real season.
So when this Sunday showed up completely empty, it genuinely disoriented people. One guy reportedly refreshed the schedule four times before accepting reality. Another texted the guy on his team with the spreadsheet, who responded with a single question mark, which from him is basically a full emotional breakdown.
You root for teams you’ve never seen. You root against teams that have done nothing personally to you but happen to be sitting two spots ahead in the standings. You have opinions about programs in states you have never visited. Strong opinions.
And for one Sunday, for the first time since before any of it actually mattered, none of that was available.
The next time it happens is March 2nd. A Monday. One quiet day tucked into the calendar before the stretch run of the season takes over completely and the math gets very serious very fast. After that, nothing until April. So the schedule is essentially giving the community two days off between now and the postseason, and it had the decency to put them weeks apart so nobody goes into full withdrawal.
Enjoy this Sunday. Sit with the silence. Let the standings just exist without your help for one afternoon.
Although, there is one other possibility worth mentioning. There is apparently a blizzard in the forecast. And if that storm wipes out tomorrow’s games, we will have back to back days with nothing on the board. Sunday and Monday. Two consecutive days of no results, no shifts in the standings, no data for the spreadsheet guy.
Nobody has stress-tested that scenario this season.
The spreadsheet guy has not been warned.
Honestly, someone should probably check on him.