Every play Zachary Upp makes seems to carry the weight of the years he has spent mastering the sport he loves. His powerful swings and quick reactions on the court are the result of a journey that began as a child’s curiosity and evolved into leadership at the highest level of sitting volleyball.
At 25 years old, the American outside hitter has become one of the most reliable scorers in men’s sitting volleyball. At the 2025 WPV Sitting Volleyball World Cup in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he led all players in total points with 144 as the U.S. men finished fourth on home soil. The women’s team, meanwhile, won the World Cup title in front of an appreciative audience, creating a week of celebration for the host nation.
His path to sitting volleyball began unexpectedly, when a simple day at the gym set in motion a life-changing journey.
“I started playing sitting volleyball in 2013,” he says. “I ran into the old head coach of the women’s team at a standing tournament in Chicago. He was confused as to why a little kid was running around a volleyball hall and told my area that if I ever showed up to a club practice, they should give me a chance.”
He joined a club in the Great Lakes region soon after and began developing his skills among much older players.
“I got to go and started playing at Pipeline, in the Chicagoland area,” he said. “I played there from the age of 13 until I was 16, 17, and then I was actually part of the national team in 2017.”
While other teenagers were still working their way through school sports, Upp was already flying regularly to train with the national development team.
“Around my 13th birthday I had to fly to Oklahoma City, where our training ground is,” he said. “I trained there from 2013 to 2017. I flew out on Thursday, came back on Sunday and went to school on Monday morning. It was a lot. I played volleyball almost all year round.”
Before Upp started with the sitting discipline, he had already built a strong foundation in standing volleyball.
“I played standing volleyball, completely physical,” he said. “I played high school and club volleyball, so my life was a revolving door of more volleyball. It made me learn very, very quickly.”
Adjusting to the seated version required new movement, awareness and patience.
“The biggest difference was learning the movement,” he said. “Your hands are used for everything: passing, blocking, hitting, but you also have to have them on the ground to move. It’s a very difficult concept to get. In standing volleyball, your legs are for movement and jumping, so you can separate those two things.”
He found that his skills were revitalized once he understood the rhythm of sitting volleyball.
“Strangely enough, I’ve always been better at passing while sitting than standing,” he said, laughing. “I played on the right side and was usually taken out for the back row when standing. I wasn’t a good passer. But when sitting, something just clicked.”
Upp also learned how physical dynamics change in a game where jumping is no longer applicable.
“It’s not how long you stand, but how high you can reach from your chair,” he said. “If your seat reach is greater than someone who’s six feet tall, you’re higher off the floor. There’s no jumping, so it’s not really about how high you can get off the ground. It’s about how high you can reach. Height makes a difference, but smaller players can absolutely be effective too.”
The lessons were not only technical but also personal. Joining an elite team as a teenager meant growing up quickly.
“Sitting volleyball has made me much more mature,” he says. “Being a younger guy on a team that was almost exclusively adults, I was the youngest for almost a decade for six years or something like that. I had to learn very quickly what’s okay and what’s not. There wasn’t really a learning curve. It was a lot of yes or no, but it was a lot of fun.”
The maturity he acquired during those years shaped the player he has become.
“I moved to Oklahoma when I was 18, right after I graduated high school,” he said. “I’ve been playing every day since then. We’ve had the weekends off, but since 2018 it’s been constant. When you play every day, you rewire your brain. You go from thinking your hands are just for passing to knowing they’re also for moving. It took me the longest time to learn that, but once you get the hang of it, it feels so good.”
Those years of dedication provided a foundation that allowed Upp to become one of the team’s leaders. He remembers looking up to the older players who helped guide him.
“I would say Eric (Duda) or James (Stuck) influenced my game the most,” he said. “They have pretty much the same playing styles as I do. Eric has always been a very power player. He likes to play a power game, just like James. They were some of the first people I saw who were really good at sitting volleyball, so I modeled myself after them.”
Upp was once the youngest member of the team and now represents experience and reliability. His performance in Fort Wayne showed both his evolution and his continued hunger to improve.
“There is still room for growth,” he said. “I feel like I’m starting to slow down a bit in those huge leaps of progress, but it’s about finding that next level, how do I keep improving at that speed. There’s no limit. I just have to keep pushing, keep a good mentality and keep the work ethic.”
Despite leading all scorers with 110 points from spikes, seven from blocks and 27 from serves, Upp does not view his tournament performance as the end of his progress.
“I’ve been working on blocking a lot,” he said. “That’s the weakest part of my game right now. I need a lot more work on that. I always like to come to a tournament because I find things to work on, and then I get to go home and do it.”
More than a decade since that first meeting in a Chicago gym, Upp continues to find motivation in every game and training session.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “Every event gives you something new to learn. I’ve grown a lot since then, but that same passion to keep getting better hasn’t changed.”
As the US program looks ahead to the next Paralympic cycle towards Los Angeles 2028, Upp’s role has become more important than ever. Years of steady work and daily training have shaped a player who now measures success not by perfection, but by constant growth.
The boy who once chased volleyballs across a gym floor has become the top scorer in a world event. His journey reflects the spirit of the sport and the belief that progress never stops.
For him there is really no other way than up.
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