Cassidy Lichtman Shares Why Athletes Unlimited Volleyball Returned To Texas For Season 2

Cassidy Lichtman has played volleyball all around the world. The Stanford alumnae played with the United States National Team and professionally abroad for the last xx years. So being a founding member of the Athletes Unlimited Volleyball league was a breath of fresh air for her and many other players.

At the close of last season, Lichtman reflected on her time in Dallas with this new and innovative sports league.

“In my wildest dreams, there’s no way I could have thought of this,” she said. “There’s no way I could have thought of being on a Topps card, or a league that would donate to the causes we care about, or Gloria Steinem wearing our t-shirt.”

Lichtman returned to AU volleyball for another six-week season in Dallas, Texas. She again holds a leadership position as a member of the Player Executive Committee and the Board of Directors. She is among the voices tasked with synthesizing what players want and moving forward with action, all in service of fully acknowledging and embracing the variety of roles each player brings to the sport.

“The power of Athletes Unlimited is in recognizing that we are these three-dimensional human beings,” Lichtman told me in a phone conversation last week. “For me to walk into the building and have it represents so many of the different aspects of us, and our in our history, and what has brought us to this place is incredibly powerful.”

Since AU Volleyball crowned Jordan Larson as its inaugural champion, Texas has passed legislation to ban critical race theory, enforced what is known as the ‘Heartbeat Act’ that makes abortion services six weeks after pregnancy illegal, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called for citizen to report parents of transgender children for child abuse if the children are believed to be “receiving gender-affirming medical care”.

So, what do you do when a league with a high emphasis on civic engagement and placing athletes first conflicts with the politics of the host state of their league? Do you divest? Do you relocate to another single-site? Or, do you stay and embrace the multi-dimensional aspects of advocacy, education, and civic engagement?

Athletes Unlimited Volleyball chose the latter.

Lichtman and others started by talking to local organizations. It was a move the group felt strongly about in the wake of Major League Baseball pulling its 2020 All-Star Game from Atlanta because of a voting restriction law.

“Sometimes boycotts affect the people on the ground in ways that you didn’t expect, so it was really important to hear from those people,” Lichtman told me. In addition, the league leaders reached out to organizations working on specific issue areas, including voting rights, reproductive rights, and other causes important to the athletes and that may be impacted by recent Texas law.

It was decided more could be done if the league stayed instead of packing up and playing elsewhere. Staying in Texas has also been an opportunity for the players to discuss these topics among themselves. Once maintaining the safety of players and staff seemed achievable, the players’ executive committee established a Texas working group to talk through strategy.

“Our PEC, in collaboration with AU, ended up deciding that we’re coming to Dallas and walking into the current epicenter of a fight that has spanned generations. We will celebrate our women along with the ones who came before us, support businesses owned by women and people of color, and encourage civic engagement and voter registration. And we’ll play some really great volleyball because that’s part of the work as well,” Lichtman wrote in an op-ed for Just Women’s Sports.

Once again, athletes will have a chance to play for a cause or non-profit in partnership with the platform Give Lively. Lichtman says the committee did curate a few additional options to fit the decision to increase in Dallas in solidarity. For example, AU has a curated list of suggested books fans can view in the merchandise shop at Fair Park Collesium. The league also launched the Power in my Voice voter engagement campaign in partnership with Vote.org.

“We don’t necessarily want our fans to show up in protest of what’s going on, but to show up in a way that we can live our values,” Lichtman said.

Together, the approach is a calling in, not a calling out. It is a way for the AU Volleyball athletes to utilize their platform to celebrate voices and organizations in Texas that’ve been impacted by recent legislation.

“Our existence in this space has not always been guaranteed, and it’s still not necessarily supported in the ways that we want it to be. And so, us just showing up and doing what we do, is in and of itself, important, and so I think all of what we’ve put into place, you know, here in Texas … is an extension of that of the fact that we are not just showing up as athletes.”

As an athlete, Lichtman returned for another year because she believes in what Athletes Unlimited is doing for the present and future of women’s professional volleyball. Returning to Dallas runs parallel to that.

“It felt like such an opportunity to come and say something and stand up for those people who, like I said in my op-ed, didn’t ask for this and are sitting in the middle of it. Over the course of the last few months, as we’ve been planning our response and how we’re going to show up, it has kind of both affirmed my belief in this organization to and its values and the way that it puts them into practice, and empowers, in particular, us as athletes to be a part of that entire process.”

In addition to lifting up local Dallas voices, Lichtman is once again playing on behalf of P/ath, a nonprofit she founded with the purpose of positioning youth athletes and teams for success in sports and to build a better world.

Lichtman and the blue team captained by outside hitter Dani Drews returns to action against Shiela Castro’s team Wednesday at 6:00 pm ET on YouTube.