The story follows the protagonist Shōyō Hinata, a junior high student, who becomes inspired to play volleyball after seeing a match on T.V. featuring the Small Giant, a figure that becomes Hinata's role model and motivation for playing the game. After months of being the only member in his junior high school's volleyball club, he convinced his friends to join him in an official volleyball match. There, they play against Tobio Kageyama, a very skillful but arrogant volleyball player often referred to as the "King of the Court." After pitifully losing to Kageyama in his first (and last) volleyball match as a junior high student, Hinata confronts him and promises to defeat him in the future. After graduating, Hinata attends Karasuno High School hoping to join the same volleyball team that "Small Giant" attended only to find that the "King" also joined the same volleyball team as Hinata.