Aaron Russell remembers the assumptions people made when they saw his 6-foot-9 frame while growing up in Maryland.

“Oh, you’re so tall,” they would say. “Do you play basketball?”

Actually, he would tell them, he was a volleyball player — and an awfully accomplished one at that. A member of the youth national team, Russell helped the U.S. win a bronze medal in 2011 at the U19 Pan American Cup held in Mexicali, Mexico, then played four seasons at Penn State and won four straight Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association championships.

Still people often assumed it was a girls sport. It didn’t help that Russell had to train with the Centennial High School girls team — because the school didn’t field one for boys. But perhaps, Russell said, a U.S. medal run this week in the Paris Olympics can change some of those conversations. The U.S. men’s volleyball team — ranked fourth in the world — enters the knockout round with a 3-0 record to advance to the quarterfinals to face Brazil at 3 p.m. Eastern time Monday, raising hopes of returning to the podium after finishing 10th in Tokyo.

“That can definitely bring a lot more eyes on us and kind of grow the game,” Russell said. “I think that people are pretty impressed when they watch us play and see how high we jump and also how physical we are.”

The Paris Olympics have provided a high-visibility platform for sports seeking more development opportunities for young athletes. When the U.S. men’s gymnastics team was celebrated for its return to the medal stand last week, team members used their platform to make the point that to see more success in the Olympics, their sport needed more investment in college. The U.S. women’s rugby sevens team, too, made the case for the value of a collegiate championship after its miraculous last-second win over Australia.

Men’s volleyball, among the 14 U.S. teams comprising 100% NCAA athletes, could make a similar argument. At the high school level, the sport was offered at 3,376 high schools in 2023, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations — one-fifth of the sponsorship that the girls high school game receives. And while sponsorship of men’s volleyball has more than doubled in the last 15 years in Division III, only 59 schools offer it in Divisions I and II combined — where scholarship opportunities live.

It limits opportunities for young people to discover the sport and develop into the next generation of stars of the national team. The Olympics’ visibility, though, provides a chance to showcase the sport’s potential — and to make a case for investing in it. “The more people we can get watching, the more people you get playing, the better,” said Jeff Jendryk, a U.S. middle blocker and Loyola Chicago grad who hopes viewers will see in the sport what he loves about it. “It’s just so cool that it’s in the Olympics and people are watching, and I think everyone should go on and try it. There’s so much that you can learn from it.”

It’s been eight years since Americans could cheer on a medal run in men’s volleyball. That year, in Rio de Janeiro, the men lost their first two matches in pool play before rallying to take the bronze with a five-set win over Russia. The team started out 2-1 in Tokyo three years ago before losses to Brazil and Argentina ended their medal hopes.

At the Paris Olympics, a 3-1 win Friday over Japan — the world’s sixth-ranked team — punctuated the U.S. team’s undefeated start to win its pool. All three of the U.S. wins were over top 10 teams in the FIVB world rankings.

It gives the U.S. momentum going into the knockout round and puts the spotlight on the sport, creating an opportunity to do more than win a medal.

“There’s bigger things here,” U.S. coach John Speraw said. “When you represent the United States of America, it’s not about going out and winning just another volleyball tournament. This isn’t just another volleyball tournament. … But we know there’s more people watching, and we know there’s more young people watching. And we hope that we can inspire the next generation of athletes.”