Three Cannons and a 3-0 Sweep: What Arizona State Taught Vietnamese Women's Volleyball About Balance

More than 5,000 people watched the livestream of three former national team players, and I was no longer alone.

That night, when Arizona State ended the third set with a block stuffing Jordyn Harvey's attack, I sat alone in my apartment in Hai Phong, the laptop screen glowing, and I screamed as if I were at Lach Tray. The neighbors probably thought this old woman was watching football. No. Volleyball. Women's volleyball. American college volleyball.

25-19, 25-21, 26-24.

Three sets. No set was easy. No set was lucky.

I wrote the score into my notebook, the one I've used since SEA Games 2026, where three former national team players sat at my home recalling the final, each seeing themselves in it. The notebook smells of beer and old paper. And at 60, I still think I am the girl jumping on the Lach Tray stands.

But this time, there were no stands. Only an American college women's volleyball match I had to watch via livestream at 3 a.m. Vietnam time, and a bigger question clung to me: What makes a women's volleyball team capable of beating a traditional powerhouse?

The answer is not in Jordyn Harvey, despite her 18 points at a .455 hitting percentage, the match high. The answer lies in three names few Vietnamese know: Aniya Clinton, Noemie Glover, Una Vajagic. And a 19-year-old girl named Elle Mottola, who set well enough that I had to rewind the footage to count.

This is not a piece praising America. This is a lesson Vietnamese women's volleyball needs to hear.

Context: A League I Had to Relearn

I must admit something. When I first received the assignment to cover this match, I thought I would write it quickly. Thirty years of writing about women's volleyball — from the domestic national championship to SEA Games, Asian Cup, Russia World Cup — I thought I knew everything. But NCAA Division I women's volleyball is a different world.

No Olympic qualifying. No FIVB slots. No continental brackets. Just a fall season running from August to December, over 300 teams divided into dozens of conferences, and a selection committee evaluating every win against a ranked opponent.

The system here operates on RPI — Rating Percentage Index — and that logic completely changes how a team builds its schedule. Non-conference matches are not friendlies for fun. They are resume-building games. Every win over a top-25 team counts as a "quality win," and those wins can decide a ticket to the 64-team knockout bracket.

In Vietnam, we are used to a strong team simply winning domestically, then playing the Asian championship, then thinking about the world stage. In America, from September onward, every match already carries the weight of a playoff game.

I remember 2026, when I witnessed the U19 Southeast Asian women's final at Lach Tray Stadium, I dropped all my tactical notes to jump up and celebrate with the crowd after the 17-year-old striker's double. That day I forgot the post-match interview. But that forgetting taught me that sometimes the moment matters more than the notes. This time, I did not forget the notes. But my heart still raced like that day.

And I understood one thing: women's volleyball in America is no second-tier sport. It is a real industry, with hundreds of millions in broadcast rights, with NIL — Name, Image, Likeness — allowing female athletes to earn from their image while still in school, and with a transfer portal allowing a rising team like Arizona State to import an attacker from Wisconsin in a single summer.

That is the context. And within that context, a win over Stanford — ranked No. 8 nationally — is no ordinary match. It is a statement.

Core: Three Names and an Undeniable Sweep

To understand why Arizona State won, I had to rewind the footage and write down three names.

First: Aniya Clinton. Outside hitter, college graduate — meaning she is 22, 23, a big sister on a team full of eighteen- and twenty-year-olds. In this match, Clinton scored 15 points at a .522 hitting percentage. .522 means that for every two attacks, more than one was a direct point. In any women's league in the world, a percentage above .500 belongs to the top attackers. But Clinton did not just score. She led through presence — the kind of presence Vietnamese girls like Ngoc Hoa and Thanh Thuy once brought to the national team.

Second: Noemie Glover. Opposite hitter, the team's season leader with 126 attack points. In this match, she scored 16.5 points (in NCAA volleyball, a successful attack counts as an attack point, but team stats may include blocks and aces). Glover is the main cannon on the right wing — a position we in Vietnam call "doi chuyen," where a girl needs to be strong, fast, and unafraid of the block.

Third: Una Vajagic. Outside hitter, transferred from Wisconsin over the summer. She scored 124 attack points for the season, nearly matching Glover. That means Arizona State has two attackers nearly equal in output. That is something most Asian women's volleyball teams dream of and do not have: two balanced cannons, so the opponent cannot load the block on one side.

Three people. Three cannons. Plus a middle blocker good enough to stretch the block, Arizona State has four threats at the net.

But the key to the match was not the three attackers. It was the fourth person, the 19-year-old setter.

Elle Mottola. Freshman. This match, Mottola recorded 45 assists — a career high, and her second match this season above 40 assists. At 19, setting for a top-15 team with three elite attackers, against a historic powerhouse, and still maintaining the calm to distribute the ball evenly across the net.

I must be honest: if Vietnam had a 19-year-old doing this in the national championship, I would write about her a piece three times longer than this one. Because setter is the hardest position in women's volleyball. It is where experience matters more than physique, where reading the game matters more than the swing, where coolness under pressure matters more than everything.

Mottola did not just set. She was the conductor of an orchestra of three different instruments. And that orchestra played in harmony.

The data shows Arizona State won Set 1 with a 15-10 kill edge. They recorded 22 kills in Set 3. And across the match, they had 12 blocks — a very high number for college women's volleyball, where blocking technique is often less uniform than in the professional game.

What do 12 blocks mean? It means Arizona State's block read Stanford's setting, anticipated the landing spots, and stood in the right places. That is not luck. That is video preparation, opponent analysis, disciplined training.

I remember in Russia, covering World Cup 2026, I sat drinking beer with a Brazilian colleague after a press conference. She told me something I have carried for seven years: "Women's volleyball is not won by stars. Women's volleyball is won by systems." That day I forgot to record the press conference of the France head coach and had to ask a young colleague to send me the tape. But the Brazilian girl's words I never forgot.

And that night in San Luis Obispo, the words repeated.

Stanford's Blind Spot: When One Star Is Not Enough

Jordyn Harvey scored 18 points. That was the match high. She attacked 33 times, scored 18, at .455. If you only read that stat line, you would think Stanford won. Or at least, that Harvey was the best player of the match.

She was the best player. But her team lost.

This is one of the most beautiful paradoxes of volleyball: individual excellence is not enough to beat a balanced collective. And that is the biggest lesson of this match.

Look at Stanford's attack structure. One attacker scored 18 points while in Set 1 the team managed only 10 kills — far below Arizona State's 15. That means when Harvey rotated to the back row or was blocked, Stanford had almost no Plan B. There was no reliable secondary attacker to stretch the block or win key points in stalemate situations.

In volleyball, when a team depends on one attacker, the opposing block adjusts. They read the setter's hands. They know where the ball is going. And at decisive moments — Set 3, with the score 24-23 in Stanford's favor — they block the right spot.

Set 3 was the revealing set. Stanford led 24-23. Just one more point and they would win the set, make it 2-1, and the momentum would shift. But Arizona State scored three straight points to finish 26-24. Where did those three points come from? A block, a successful dig leading to a counterattack, and a swing by Glover or Clinton — people whose names were not at the top of the box score but were on the scoreboard.

That is the difference between a team with multiple cannons and a team with one. When things get tense, the first can be blocked. The second can be blocked. But the third, the fourth — they are still there.

I remember 2026, when goalkeeper Ahli retired after winning 28 titles with his club. He was one of the greatest goalkeepers in the club's history, but he always said: "A goalkeeper cannot keep a clean sheet if the defense is not standing right." That is true in football. And it is true in women's volleyball, where one attacker scoring 18 points can still lose if the three people around her do not do enough.

Stanford has Harvey. Stanford does not have the three people around her doing enough.

And there is one detail I want those coaching Vietnamese women's volleyball to note specifically: Stanford has lost three of its last four matches. This is the No. 8 team in the country. They are not losing form because of a lack of talent. They are losing form because the team's structure is no longer balanced.

Contrarian Angle: The Rankings Are Lying, and Vietnamese Women's Volleyball Needs to Re-read This Lesson

This is the part where I want to slow down, because it touches what I believe most after 44 years of observing women's sports.

Rankings do not just rank the strongest teams. They rank the strongest brands. And in American college women's volleyball — as in Vietnamese women's volleyball, or women's basketball, or women's football — those two things are not always the same.

Stanford is ranked No. 8 because Stanford is Stanford. A university with deep history, a women's sports program invested with tens of millions, a brand any 17-year-old girl dreams of joining. But a brand cannot block a ball. A brand cannot dig a ball. And when three of the last four matches end in defeat, the ranking begins to become a polite lie.

Conversely, Arizona State has a head coach named JJ Van Niel, who in four seasons has led the team to 20 wins over ranked opponents, including 6 over top-10 opponents. Last season, the team set a program record with 8 ranked wins. This season, only four matches in, they already have 4 such wins — half the record in half the time.

That is the data of an ascending program. Not a lucky win. Not a hot night. A trajectory.

But — and here is the contrarian angle I want to emphasize — that trajectory also has a hole.

Arizona State lost to an unranked team, UC Davis, in the opening match of the previous preseason tournament. That is the mark of a young team with a very high ceiling but a very low floor. And the reason lies at the setter position.

Mottola is 19. She sets well. But a young setter, no matter how talented, will have nights when the ball is out of rhythm, nights when she loses confidence after two or three blocks, and nights when she tries too hard to fix mistakes by setting the person she trusts most instead of the person in the best form.

That is Arizona State's biggest risk this season. Not injury. Not schedule. But the volatility of a 19-year-old girl carrying the responsibility of a top national setter.

And I see myself in that story.

In 2026, sent to Russia for the World Cup, I was 53 and thought I understood everything. But after one night in Moscow, I forgot my assignment to record the France head coach's press conference. I had to ask a young colleague to send me the tape. That night taught me that experience does not immunize against mistakes. And youth does not mean weakness.

Mottola may have a bad night. But she may also be the best setter American college women's volleyball produces this decade. We do not know yet. And that not-knowing is what makes sports compelling.

What Vietnamese Women's Volleyball Can Learn

I am not writing this to praise America. I am writing to bring a lesson closer.

In Vietnam, women's volleyball is in a transition. The national championship is becoming more professional. Clubs are beginning to care about data, video analysis, athlete load management. But the biggest question remains unanswered: How do you build a women's team with more than one cannon?

The Arizona State-Stanford match is one answer.

First, balance is not a slogan. It is a personnel decision. Arizona State has two outside hitters nearly equal in output (126 and 124 points for the season). That means the coach must accept that neither will be the league's top scorer. But the team will win. That is a trade-off many Vietnamese coaches — and many coaches worldwide — dare not make, for fear of losing their brightest star.

Second, a young setter needs to be placed at the center, not in the backup position. Mottola, 19, was given the keys to a top-15 team. In Vietnam, we often let a 19-year-old setter sit behind a 28-year-old setter, and when the 28-year-old retires, the 19-year-old has become 25 with very little real-match experience. That is a waste of a generation.

Third, a transfer system — though we do not yet have an NCAA-style transfer portal — can still be simulated by allowing clubs to exchange athletes or letting young athletes study at universities abroad and return. Una Vajagic moved from Wisconsin to Arizona State in one summer. That is how a rising program closes the gap with a traditional program in a shockingly short time.

Fourth, and perhaps most important: a win over a ranked team is not the destination. It is a data point. Arizona State beat Stanford, but immediately afterward they face Cal Poly — a match that, if they lose, will cast doubt on everything built in the Stanford win. Women's volleyball does not reward moments. It rewards endurance.

I remember SEA Games 2026. Three former national team players sat at my home, watching the final replay on the big screen, and each saw themselves in it — in every rally, every cheer, every drop of sweat. That day I understood that sports memory is not the result. Sports memory is the feeling of living inside that moment.

And tonight, when Arizona State finished Set 3 at 26-24, I felt it again. The feeling of a 60-year-old woman sitting alone in Hai Phong, looking at a screen, and seeing herself jumping on the stands.

What Is Changing

There is one thing I want anyone interested in Vietnamese women's volleyball to remember.

The Arizona State-Stanford match is not just an American college volleyball match. It is a signal about how women's volleyball is being reorganized worldwide. It is a shift from the "star-led" model to the "system-supporting-star" model. It is a shift from building a team around one attacker to building a team around a young setter. And it is a shift from evaluating female athletes by individual achievement to evaluating them by their ability to make those around them better.

At 60, I still think I am the girl jumping on the Lach Tray stands. But that girl now knows a little more. She knows that sometimes a women's team wins not because it has the highest scorer. But because it has three people scoring enough, one person setting well enough, and twelve blocks accurate enough to silence the doubts.

The second half of this story lies in Vietnam. In whether we have the courage to hand the keys to a 19-year-old girl. In whether we have the patience to build three cannons instead of one. And in whether we have the humility to learn from an American college women's volleyball match at 3 a.m.

I think we do. Because tonight, a young girl named Elle Mottola proved that age does not determine calm. And tonight, three women named Clinton, Glover, and Vajagic proved that collective strength does not need a single leader.

Women's volleyball does not need miracles. It needs presence. And on the night in San Luis Obispo, presence won.