Leaders from volleyball federations worldwide will vote for the first time on Friday to elect a president for the sport’s international governing body.
The FIVB World Congress, convened in Anaheim, Calif., this week, will select a successor for Jizhong Wei of China, who was appointed to the post in Beijing four years ago. He insisted he would step aside after a single presidential term, making way for the first democratic election in the organization’s history.
Among the candidates for the FIVB’s top position is USA Volleyball CEO Doug Beal. No American currently leads an international governing body for a summer Olympic sport.
The other candidates include Ary Graca, president of both the South American volleyball confederation and the Brazilian volleyball federation, and Chris Schacht, president of the Australian volleyball federation.
Beal, a three-time Olympian as a player and coach of the gold medal-winning U.S. men’s national team at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, has the support of the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Volleyball’s board of directors in his pursuit of the position.
He became CEO of USA Volleyball in 2005. He has worked on the administrative boards of the FIVB and the North, Central American and Caribbean Volleyball Confederation, or NORCECA.
Beal, who at the London Games said he was likely an underdog for the job, told The Associated Press this week that he believes he has growing support. His strategy has been to engage one on one with as many federation leaders as possible.
“I think I have some quite novel, different ideas for how we should operate this international federation, and many of the people I talk to are quite positive and seem to agree, and want a lot of the changes I’m proposing,” he said. “So I’m optimistic.”
Beal praised Wei for making the FIVB a more “open, democratic and transparent” organization, and said he would like to accelerate that process. Among his goals is to reach out to the smaller federations for a more grass-roots approach to promoting the sport worldwide.
“I’ve learned a lot in being CEO at USA volleyball. I know that fundamentally the success of the programs and the success of some of the objectives within FIVB depend on hiring good people and letting them do the work and the job that we hired them to do,” Beal said. “I think I can delegate, I think I listen well, I think I can manage and I think I can create a positive culture. I think I can relate to the different federations around the world.”
Graca, however, is widely considered the favorite for the job. Cristobal Marte Hoffiz, head of the NORCECA, Amr Elwani of the African Volleyball Confederation and Saleh Bin Nasser of the Asian Volleyball Confederation have expressed their support for Graca.
The FIVB, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, governs volleyball and beach volleyball worldwide and oversees 220 affiliated federations. The 33rd World Congress opened on Wednesday.
A record 262 delegates representing a record 201 countries are attending the congress, according to the FIVB.
