The Olympics may not be coming to Southern California until 2028, but this year’s Summer Games will still get a taste of the Southland, given the numerous Californians competing in Paris beginning later this month.

One of those competitors, men’s volleyball player TJ DeFalco, attended Huntington Beach High School and Cal State Long Beach, where the team made four NCAA Final Fours and captured two national championships, before beginning his professional career.

The outside hitter is preparing for his second Olympic Games, though it will be markedly different from the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, which were actually held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unlike Tokyo, where the lack of crowds meant the team had to “make our own energy on the court,” this year’s squad has been free to focus on actual volleyball and overcoming a challenging medalless performance in Japan, DeFalco said.

“We have been using that [disappointment] as fuel and have been putting in the work to put ourselves in the best possible position to not experience that again,” DeFalco said. “However, this is still sport, and things happen in sport that sometimes teams don’t necessarily want or like. But we are coming into the best possible preparation mentally and physically. We’re going to put ourselves in the best possible situation.”

In addition physical training and top-tier equipment — DeFalco mentioned the team’s sponsor, VKTRY Insoles, and the performance boost they provide the team — the squad is preparing mentally and emotionally.

“Now we’re going to expecting that it’s going to be the wave of emotions, the roller coaster, the the ups and the downs, the sometimes get caught in the moment, like that first match going out there the butterflies, that everyone’s going to experience and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “That’s kind of on the minds now.”

Also on the minds of the volleyball players is what DeFalco and other Olympians didn’t get to experience in 2021: the camaraderie of a worldwide athletics competition.

For instance, the Olympic Village will be a much more sociable place in 2024 than it was three years ago.

“[Being in the village] doesn’t really hit you until it does, and then you’re like, ‘Holy cow. I’m in the village right now, and there’s 45 different countries around me right now and we’re all walking to the cafeteria,'” DeFalco said. “There’s no other timeframe on Earth where you can be able to do that. It’s really special and I’m excited about it.”

DeFalco will also be getting an up-close-and-personal look at what hosting the Olympics can do to an area, a phenomenon that’s set to strike Southern California in 2028. Though the volleyball team is laser-focused on the coming competition, the team trains in Anaheim, and the idea of the event coming to the Southland “of course comes up in conversation,” he said.

“It’s been in Ohio as early as the mid-1850s at least, brought in as an ornamental plant because of its unique foliage and white flowers,” Gardner said. “It was actually planted in people’s landscaping, and it has been spreading.”

“How is L.A. going to do it? I’m interested to see how we’re going to manage that many people coming in on top of the population that’s already here, and where would they do it,” he said.

While the crowds are a concern, that’s one for the organizers to handle. In fact, DeFalco expressed hope that he and his teammates would drum up fascination in volleyball during this Olympics, transforming what’s “sort of a sleeper sport” into a something more than an underappreciated event.

“When people finally watch it for the first time, [the reaction is] ‘Holy cow, why are more people not watching this kind of thing?'” he said. “I would just want to say to the audience that if you guys have time, you don’t have anything to watch or your favorite sports aren’t playing, give men’s volleyball a try.”