Chapter 42: Volleyball

The area outside the basketball stadium already was crowded with players from the 17 other volleyball teams, the members of the university’s sororities and fraternities, and various students and faculty members interested in watching the volleyball tournament. Word that the Four-Betas would be forced to play in the nude already had spread among the rival sororities. This was going to be interesting, thought all those women to themselves. Would the “sex bitches” actually have the nerve to show up?

The sight of 170 Tri-Alphas and Four-Betas, cheerfully singing and clapping as they marched towards the stadium, answered that question. Yes, the Four-Betas would play, and yes, they would play naked. As for humiliating them, perhaps that wasn’t going to be as easy as everyone had thought, because they had the solidarity of the entire membership of their sorority and the associated fraternity. Nor would just the team and the Four-Beta officers be naked. Nudity was to be the uniform of the team, therefore it would be the uniform of the team’s supporters.

The other sororities’ efforts to jeer and taunt the Four-Beta team turned out not to be very effective, because the team members were marching into the basketball arena as part of a much larger group. The Tri-Alphas jeered back, matching their rivals insult for insult. The rivalry became very bitter, but the show of support from their friends strengthened the resolve of Lisa and her companions to play as well as possible.

The sorority and fraternity members filed into their assigned seating areas. Everyone’s eyes were on the Four-Betas and Tri-Alphas. What were they wearing under their robes? Would they really watch their team play in the nude? That question was answered when Four-Beta President Alexandra took off her robe, folded it, and set it on her seat as a cushion. Her companions followed suit, exposing themselves to thousands of other spectators in a powerful show of support for their team. They cheered and waved to their rivals, not embarrassed in the least about their very public display.

At first the other people in the stadium were shocked, but soon the arena erupted into a strange din of cheering, whistling, cat-calls, and booing. The members of the audience who cheered the loudest were students that were not associated with any of the fraternities or sororities. The story behind why the Four-Betas were playing in the nude quickly was spreading through the audience, along with the fact the team counted on the full support of the other members. The enthusiastic support of their friends impressed many of the spectators, but what mattered even more was the fact the Four-Beta team had the guts to show up and play, no matter what. They clearly were the outsiders, and thus became the favorites of many in the audience.

The 17 other sorority presidents were dismayed that their effort to humiliate the Four-Beta Sorority was not going according to plan, but they couldn’t dwell on that. They had to start the opening ceremony on time, so at 9:00 they dimmed the lights several times to force the boisterous crowd to quiet down.

The president of the Sorority Sports League stepped into the middle of the arena and announced the beginning of the volleyball tournament. She then ordered the presidents of the 18 participating sororities to bring their teams to the floor for presentation and to sing the U.S. National Anthem.

When the Four-Beta Sorority was called, the naked chapter president stood up and led her equally naked team down the bleacher stairs to the main floor. There was a strange combination of genuine cheering, sarcastic cheering, and outright booing as the Four-Beta team took their places among the other teams. The booing did not phase the Four-Beta team. That was what they expected. What did surprise them was the large number of people in the audience cheering for them. These were girls with guts, who were facing up to a challenge that no other sorority possibly could have handled. Already they were winning the admiration of many of the spectators. Even more important was the show of support by their friends. Precisely because such a large group in the audience was naked, the team representing them no longer seemed like such freaks.

The Sorority Sports League president turned off her microphone and snarled at President Alexandra:

“Tell your members to get dressed, right now! The rule change is just for your team, not for spectators!”

Alexandra handed her rival a printout of the rule that had just been adopted by the Four-Beta Sorority and the Tri-Alpha Fraternity:

When attending any athletic event in which members of the Tri-Alpha Fraternity or the Four-Beta Sorority are participating, the standard of dress will be set by the highest-ranking officer present. Clothing worn by rank-and-file members will match the clothing worn by the aforementioned officer.

“This is our rule. It’s written in our rulebook, for our members. If you want to debate this, let’s do it! Right now, in front of all these spectators! Turn on your microphone and let’s debate it!

When Alexandra reached for the microphone, the Sorority Sports League president jerked it away:

“Tell your members to get dressed, or I’m calling the fucking cops!”

“Do it! Call the cops! You can explain to them why we’re forced to field a team that’s naked! This was your decision! We’re just complying with your rules and showing support for our team! If you don’t like it, call the fucking cops, and then you and me get to debate this on six-oh-clock news!”

Alexandra’s rival hesitated. The last thing she wanted was for the running dispute between her and the Four-Betas to receive any more public airing. If she and Alexandra showed up together on TV, she knew that the Four-Beta president’s public speaking skills and calm public demeanor would make anyone debating her look like an idiot.

“Fine, have it your way, you fuckin’ bare-assed slut!”

Alexandra took a deep breath to calm down slightly. She was ready to pounce on her rival, but knew better. She had just won the first confrontation of the volleyball tournament. Why spoil that? The continuing show of solidarity from her sorority’s members for her team was what really mattered. The Four-Betas and Tri-Alphas were in this together, a fact that later would be noticed by the sports reporters covering the tournament.

Lisa noticed the confrontation between her chapter president and the sports league president. She could tell the two seniors were exchanging unpleasant words, but she had a more immediate concern on her mind: sizing up the opposing teams. The majority of the rival women wore uniforms consisting of matching T-shirts and shorts. No one wore knee-pads or numbered jerseys, which to Lisa was one clear indication that the games were not really taken very seriously. The Four-Betas were denied knee-pads by the condition of the rule changes, but the others were not wearing them by choice.

Lisa was more worried about doing well during the games than the fact that she was standing naked with her teammates in front of an audience of 6,000 students. She had been very stressed about having had so little time to put her team together, but could tell that most of her competitors were not much better off. It was possible they had more time to practice, but for the majority of the sororities, that extra time didn’t mean much. All except three of the rival teams clearly were lacking in physical conditioning. Once they started playing, Lisa would have to assess whether or not the opposing players on any given team had playing experience or were specialized.

Once all 18 teams had been introduced and were on the floor standing in formation, everyone stood quietly while the U.S. National Anthem was played. Now that truly was a strange sensation, to have to salute the U.S. flag in the nude. Lisa could tell that being naked in public during the National Anthem somewhat unnerved a couple of her teammates. She would have to use the warm-up drills to give them a chance to calm down before starting them in the first game.

The Sorority Sports League president announced that the first match would start at 9:30. A cheer went up when the audience heard that one of the two starting teams would be the Four-Betas. So that was it, the crowd would get to watch a team of women playing serious volleyball in the nude.

Apart from the very vocal support of their sorority and the Triple-A’s, the Four-Beta team had another stroke of luck working in their favor that year. The referees were members of the regular university varsity women’s volleyball team and in no way were directly associated with the Sorority Sports League. No one knew it at the time, but the Four-Betas counted with the secret sympathy of several referees. That sympathy would be tremendously helpful, because the referees not only scored the games, but also approved and finalized the game schedules. Having outsiders score the games had been crucial to preventing fights between rival sororities over the fairness of the games, and now would work against the effort to humiliate Lisa’s team.

In fact, the referees were irritated that the sorority league had not adopted recent NCAA rule changes and were not taking the basic precaution of forcing their players to wear kneepads. Now, on top of everything else, the other sororities were forcing one of their participating teams to play in the nude. The Four-Betas would be assured of even-handed treatment and the other sororities knew that cheating was not a realistic option. If they won against the Four-Betas, they would have to win honestly.

There was another detail that began to worry the other teams. The Four-Betas were physically fit and well prepared to play. Lisa led her team through several warm-up drills to keep her players motivated and to get their minds off the Pledge of Allegience. It was obvious the 4-B’s were thinking more about getting through the first day than the fact they were naked. As for the team captain, Lisa began enjoying the feeling of the cool air-conditioned breeze blowing against her bare skin and the fact that her body was exposed to so many spectators. Yes, she might have been nervous about playing, but what she was going through at the moment was an exhibitionist’s dream.

The very first game, played against Brittany and Erin’s old sorority, was a blow-out. Supposedly the game was going to be a revenge match for the Four-Betas’ most bitter rivals, but it seemed that their talent for volleyball was comparable to their talent for street brawling. The final scores was 15-2, 15-0, and 15-3. Brittany and Erin looked on with deep satisfaction as their former sorority sisters cried from the humiliating defeat and the crowd loudly cheered for the naked “sex-bitches”.

As much as the two defectors wanted to taunt their former tormentors, they held their tongues. As Lisa said prior to the game:

“I want you to remember that a good Four-Beta lets her actions speak for her. The only taunting I want for the other teams is gonna be from looking at their scores and wondering what went wrong.”

As the day progressed, the performance of the next team was not much better, 15-6, 15-8, and 15-4. The final team was one of the teams that most concerned Lisa, and they played a grueling and exciting set of matches, with the final scores logged as 15-13, 12-15, and 15-13. The Four-Betas ended the day with a hard-fought victory against a rival that had been favored to win. By Wednesday night it already was obvious the Four-Betas would be among the eight teams participating in the Saturday play-offs.

Wednesday night Lisa reviewed the day’s performance with her players in the Four-Beta sitting room. The team members were in very high spirits and were actually proud to be the only naked team playing in the tournament. They had showered and as a show of solidarity had decided that none of them would get dressed until the sorority tournament was over. The players were looking forward to the following two days, obviously expecting to win and hopefully match the performance of the previous year’s team. Lisa tempered their enthusiasm:

“Right now I’m not worried about Sunday, or even Saturday for that matter. Today we won because the other teams weren’t ready for us. Now they will be ready, and they’re gonna throw everything they have at us just to keep us out of the play-offs. We’ve got three teams we’re going up against tomorrow and we’ve got to win those matches game by game, point by point, dig by dig, spike by spike. Now, I want to hear from each of you what you think you need to do to improve your performance. Then we need to talk strategy and tweak our line-up.”

When the Four-Beta’s returned with their enthusiastic escort to the basketball stadium on Thursday, the atmosphere of the entire arena had changed. Word had spread across campus that a naked team was playing in the sorority tournament and had won against all three opponents the previous day. That was something worth seeing. In classrooms throughout the university the male population was nowhere to be seen, because the men were crowded into the basketball stadium to watch the amazing spectacle of naked volleyball players.

The president of the Sorority Sports League realized she did have a chance to pressure the Four-Beta team, by broadcasting live shots of them on the arena’s huge monitors overlooking the audience. There was no reason the monitors could not feature close-up shots of the Four-Betas’ breasts, bottoms, and faces to make sure all those guys had a really good look at them. In fact, why not put up the name of each Four-Beta player while her body was being exhibited on the big screens? That would be a nice surprise for the sex-bitches, to look up and see themselves on full display on those big screens.