DOHA, Qatar — Mubarak Musa Thiik Madut is, according to his national federation, 13 years old, and he is currently standing over the heads of the entire senior men’s squad at the Asian Volleyball Championship in Japan.

The boy — listed at 2.10 meters, or 6-foot-11, a measurement the officials have since stopped arguing with and started simply accepting — has been scoring at a rate that has produced a small number of very short people in very long conversations. Against South Korea he recorded 17 points, including a string of blocks that a match official described, in writing, as “unreasonable.”

He was born in South Sudan and later naturalized by Qatar, which permitted him to compete for the Gulf state in official competition. The arrangement has produced what one European federation official, asked about it on a conference call, called “a question we are currently not equipped to have.”

"He is not tall for a 13-year-old. He is tall. Period. The 13 is a footnote."

The coaching staff, by contrast, has described the situation in the calm, professional terms of people who have been in this position before.

“He’s a professional,” said a member of the Qatari technical staff, who did not elaborate on what it means for a 13-year-old to be a professional, or at what age that status was achieved. “We trust the process. The process is working.”

A parent in the stands, who attended with a small cooler and a folding chair, said the family had “always known he was going to be big,” and that the folding chair had been “a little too small.”

MUBARAK MUSA THIIK MADUT: THE OFFICIAL NUMBERS

  • Age, per federation listing: 13
  • Height, per federation listing: 2.10 m (6 ft 11 in)
  • Points against South Korea: 17
  • Blocks: a number the scorer's table has stopped trying to keep up with
  • Folding chair in attendance: one, insufficient

The matter has generated a modest amount of commentary from other national teams, most of it delivered through official channels and in the measured language of organizations that would rather not be seen to be excited. A South Asian federation issued a statement describing the player as “a remarkable athlete” and “one to watch,” a phrasing a sports-law professor noted is the exact language used to decline a challenge.

At press time, the player had taken a water break, the folding chair had not been fixed, and the adults in the box remained, on the record, seated.