Who? The USA’s 24-year-old outside hitter who has been compared to the greats of USA volleyball, most notably Karch Kiraly, and is now making his mark in Poland with AZS Olsztyn.
Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - Volleyball
Player to watch: TJ Defalco, USA
As volleyball gets underway at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, look out for this rising star of the USA team
Published 04:00, 24 Jul 2021
Early Days - Torey 'TJ' Defalco grew up in Missouri, USA, but the family later moved to California where he played volleyball for Huntington Beach High School and also played beach volleyball.
He grew up as one of seven siblings, with parents who had played volleyball to a recreational level, and who passed on their love of the sport to their children.
Defalco won bronze alongside Lucas Yoder at the 2013 FIVB Beach Volleyball U19 World Championships, then reached the quarterfinals of the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games with Louis Richard.
However, he was named MVP and Best Spiker as a member of the 2014 national youth team that won the NORCECA Boys’ Under-19 Continental Championship.
Another year on and Defalco competed at the Argentina 2015 FIVB Volleyball U19 World Championship where USA finished seventh.
Hitting the heights - Defalco began studying and playing at Long Beach State University (LBSU), and it was there that he began to make people sit up and take notice of his talent. During his collegiate career, he was named American Volleyball Coaches Association First Team All-American four times, 2016 AVCA Newcomer of the Year, 2017 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Player of the Year, and AVCA player of the year in 2017 and 2019.
In 2015 he had his first taste of life in the USA team when he was selected for the Toronto Pan-American Games where they lost in the quarterfinals to eventual gold medallists Argentina.
In 2017 he became the youngest player to play for the USA in the World League, then in 2018, he was part of the USA squad that won bronze in the VNL’s inaugural season.
Defalco played in the 2019 VNL squad that went one better and won silver, and that summer took up a one-year offer from Italian team Calabria Vibo Valentia.
In May 2020 he signed an extension with Valerio Baldovin’s team, a sign that both player and coach were happy with the way things were progressing in Serie A. He now plays for Polish club AZS Olsztyn.
In 2021, Defalco continued his strong run of form for the USA team at the FIVB Volleyball Nations League, when the outside hitter was his country's highest scoring player with 126 points.
What They Say – “Since he’s been very young, he’s had to deal with very high expectations and that’s not easy when you’re a kid,” Long Beach State University coach Alan Knipe told the Long Beach Post in 2019.
“You have no time off. Everyone is anointing you as this next great thing. The best thing about TJ is nobody could ever put an expectation on him that’s even in the realm of his expectations for himself.”
What He Says – “I want to do things perfectly. I feel like I have to do things perfectly. I want to beat teams 25-0 every set and I’m never going to get over that we can’t do it.”