Honda Center and the Anaheim rehearsal: Olympic volleyball 2028 practices early — where does Vietnam stand?

Honda Center sits in Anaheim, California, about a 45-minute drive south of downtown Los Angeles. The arena holds more than 18,000 seats and has been home to the Anaheim Ducks ice hockey team for more than three decades, as well as a stage for plenty of big concert nights. Organizers of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics have now confirmed that Honda Center will serve as the volleyball venue. What stands out is how the arena was described: a rehearsal environment for the Games. According to the released information, before the Olympics open, Honda Center will be used to test the entire operational chain of the volleyball competition. That is the work of the people behind the scenes: checking lighting, recording systems, athlete flows, referee zones, and the broadcast script served to hundreds of millions of viewers. My time on the commentary seat in Binh Duong in 2026 taught me this: the ball rolls first, and the story follows. A venue being chosen is not an emotional event. It is a fact, and that fact opens many stories behind it. Across my commentary career, I have learned that whenever a venue is announced, most viewers read the headline and scroll past. For those of us in the trade, that is when a whole machine starts turning. From the name Honda Center, one can trace a series of questions: Why was a city nearly an hour from the Olympic core chosen? How might the competition format change? How will Olympic tickets be allocated? And most importantly for us — does the qualification mechanism open an extra door for Vietnamese volleyball? I do not remember the score, but I remember the stadium lights and the sighs of the stands. That is why I always believe backstage decisions, however dry, are the things that shape the moments viewers will remember for a lifetime. The rehearsal in Anaheim is one such decision. To understand why Honda Center was chosen, it must be placed in the larger context of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. This is a Games where organizers pursue a strategy of maximizing existing facilities and limiting new construction, in order to control costs and reduce the burden on the host city. Honda Center is an arena that has run smoothly for years, with technical systems, parking, transport infrastructure, and an experienced workforce. For a sport that needs space, strong lighting and a standard court, such a multi-purpose arena is a cost-effective choice that still ensures quality. One point to note is that indoor volleyball at the Olympics features both men's and women's events, with a dense schedule of matches over more than two weeks. Each day can include several back-to-back matches, demanding extremely tight coordination: from changing the court and net to clearing the stands between sessions. An arena already used to a heavy event schedule reduces operational risk. That is the technical logic behind the name Honda Center. From my observation, recent Games have placed growing emphasis on operational preparation. After lessons from editions that suffered transport, security and coordination problems, organizers understand that a good rehearsal can save millions of dollars and avoid bad images spreading globally. So using Honda Center as an operational laboratory before the Games is a sensible, even admirable, step. In terms of format, Olympic volleyball has long maintained a structure of 12 teams in each of the men's and women's events. Teams are split into two pools, play round-robin for points, and the top teams advance to the knockout stage. This structure creates a distinctive trait: group-stage results are only enough to advance, while the title is decided in the final three matches — quarterfinals, semifinals and final. In other words, the Olympic format is highly knockout-oriented, and one explosive match day can carry an underrated team far. That structure is precisely why every Olympics hides surprises. This explains why the Olympic qualification mechanism is one of the most discussed topics each cycle. For the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, host nation USA automatically earns a berth in both the men's and women's events. Most remaining spots are typically allocated through continental qualifying tournaments and the world ranking. The exact allocation can change between cycles, but the general principle combines host spots, continental champion spots and spots based on cumulative ranking from international tournaments. For Vietnamese volleyball, this is worth discussing. In recent years, the Vietnamese women's team has made notable strides on the continental and world stage. Names such as Tran Thi Thanh Thuy, Nguyen Thi Bich Tuyen, Bui Thi Nga, Le Thanh Thuy and Doan Thi Lam Oanh have become familiar to domestic audiences. The team's presence at major tournaments, facing the world's top sides, marks an important transition. But reaching an Olympic ticket still leaves a considerable gap, and it is not only about skill. Based on my experience watching matches, I find that the road to the Games for a Southeast Asian volleyball team faces three main barriers. The first is height and power, inherent to elite volleyball. The second is the number of high-level matches each year — the less contact with strong teams, the harder it is to accumulate ranking points. The third is the qualification system, where spots often lean toward nations with historical depth in volleyball. To be clear: I do not view Honda Center's selection as an emotional piece of news. I view it as a time marker. When organizers begin testing the operational chain, it means the 2028 Olympic cycle is gradually entering its sprint phase. Tournaments over the next two years will be decisive for teams hoping to appear in Los Angeles. And every ranking point earned in this period is worth far more than in the period before. Another often-overlooked aspect is television and time zones. The Los Angeles 2028 Olympics take place on the American West Coast. For Vietnamese viewers, most matches will fall in the morning or midday — roughly 14 to 15 hours behind California time. This directly affects how the Games are approached in Vietnam. Broadcasters will have to recalculate their schedules, and viewers will have to change their habits. When media runs faster than the ball, the storyteller must know when to pause — but in this case, the time-zone gap itself forces the storyteller to shift rhythm. Honda Center as a rehearsal is also a chance to test the ability to serve foreign audiences. The Los Angeles 2028 Olympics are forecast to draw a large number of international visitors. Volleyball is a sport with a vast overseas community and fan base from Asia. Testing the ticketing system, security control and even multilingual service scripts in Anaheim will help organizers identify bottlenecks before the Games. In Russia in 2026, I corrected one name and touched an entire culture. What I learned is that respect for small details — from player-name pronunciation to signage instructions — is respect for people. The technical rehearsal at an arena like Honda Center tests more than hardware. It tests people. Hundreds of volunteers will be mobilized, and each must understand their role in a larger system. I once observed how a major tournament coordinated referees, the recording crew and the medical team in an injury situation. A single misaligned link exposes gaps across the system. So a tournament used as a test has value far beyond itself. Here, two stories must be separated. One is the operational story: how to make Olympic volleyball run smoothly. The other is the competitive story: who gets to take part. The two are related but not identical. Honda Center running well does not mean the chances of rising volleyball nations will widen. And this is where I want to place my question mark. When an Olympic venue is called a 'rehearsal', there is a strong temptation to turn it into a media event. Sponsors need exposure, organizers need good visuals, and media need a story. As a result, the rehearsal is sometimes packaged as a festival, while the core — testing the system's load capacity — is pushed down the priority list. I have seen test events staged grandly while neglecting bad-case scenarios: power outages, stand overcrowding, a communication crisis when something goes wrong. The second blind spot lies in the 'one year out' narrative. When people say an arena will serve as a rehearsal before the Games, remember that the preparation timeline for national teams is far tighter. While organizers have many years, a rising volleyball team has only a few seasons to accumulate points, build its squad and stabilize its style. The time gap between the organizer and the competitor is a paradox often ignored. The third blind spot concerns the qualification system. As Olympic spots increasingly depend on the world ranking, the advantage tilts toward volleyball nations with dense international schedules. A Southeast Asian team wanting to accumulate points must have chances to play top teams, and those chances depend on invitations to major tournaments. This is a vicious circle: less invitation means fewer points, and fewer points makes invitations even harder. A well-prepared Honda Center does not solve that circle. To name the problem directly: a technical rehearsal can never replace a fair competition system. The arena can be standardized, but the road to that arena remains full of barriers for developing volleyball nations. If we look at Honda Center only as a bright point of infrastructure, we will miss the larger question: the best-run Games are those that widen the chance to take part, not merely those with a beautiful stage. I do not deny the value of careful preparation. On the contrary, I believe it is worth learning from. But as someone who has sat on the commentary seat since 2026 and watched sport be pushed off its core values more than once, I always remind myself to look at both sides of the medal. So where is the lesson for Vietnamese volleyball? It is not in dreaming of Honda Center. It is in building a persistent roadmap: proper youth development, more international matches, and resources for a long journey. Every arena is a universe, and every player is finding their way home. For Vietnamese volleyball, that road may not lead to Los Angeles 2028, but if it heads in the right direction, it will open horizons farther ahead. That is why I read the Honda Center news with a particular calm. Not because it is unimportant, but because I know its true value will only appear when the real ball rolls, and when real people begin their journey. The rehearsal in Anaheim is a beginning. The remaining question is: what will we prepare for our own rehearsal?