Briggs: How Toledo's big bet on women's volleyball paid off spectacularly

Before last week, Toledo volleyball’s entire half-century history fit neatly on two lonely banners in the Savage Arena rafters.

One was for a 2013 Mid-American Conference co-division championship, the other for two trips to the NIVC — volleyball’s WNIT.

The Rockets’ tradition was as thin as it was hard to figure.

In many ways, Toledo seemed built for volleyball to thrive.

This is a place that proudly shows up for women’s athletics — see: the supersized basketball crowds — and Ohio is a volleyball hotbed, with the sport exploding past hoops at the prep level. (Last year, 20,237 girls played high school volleyball in Ohio; 13,078 played basketball.)

And yet …

UT never caught the wave.

Rockets volleyball lived out of sight, out of mind. The year before Bryan Blair became athletic direc