When I was in high school, I helped to start the Men's volleyball team around 1989. It was my senior year so I only got to play on the team for one year before I graduated, but the team, and volleyball, was a huge part of my life during those years. I am excited to watch my 17 year old nephew Garrett as he is experiencing something very similar right now.
Garrett has been serious about playing volleyball for several years already, and also just helped to start the volleyball team at his High School in California. He is also playing on the inaugural team for the first Men's 18 and under team for a club in Southern California and he loves to play 2-man volleyball outside. Ah a man after my own heart :)
Here is an article about Garrett's high school team. The very last line is a quote from Garrett.
Murrieta Calvary Chapel coach Jason Gladding recalled heading into his senior year at Elsinore High only to find out he no longer had a boys volleyball team to play for.
Frank Bellino / The Press-Enterprise
Coach Jason Gladding (center) works with his team during their practice at Murrieta Calvary Chapel. This is the first season the school has fielded a varsity boys volleyball team.
"It was the only sport I was interested in, and then it was gone," said Gladding, a three-year letterman before the Elsinore program folded for financial reasons in 1996. "It was like, why would they let the students down?"
Ten years later, Gladding is doing his part to give the sport a bump-up on the boys side by coaching the inaugural team at Calvary Chapel. Perris is the other school fielding a team for the first time, giving the area 19 boys varsity programs.
The number is still miniscule compared to the amount of area girls teams, and it doesn't help that the Riverside Notre Dame boys team disbanded after last season due to a lack of interest.
But while Calvary Chapel and Perris aren't expected to be very competitive this year, they already have overcome the usual reasons school administrators give for not starting boys volleyball programs.
Perris coach Mario Moreno, also the school's wrestling coach, realized that a lack of interest in the sport from boys was merely perceived when some 70 of them signed a petition expressing a desire to play.
They found a backer in Athletic Director Marci Martinez, who last season helped launch the new varsity program at Menifee Paloma Valley. Perris received school board approval as a freelance team in October, and Moreno, who had experience coaching boys volleyball at Bellflower, became the coach in January.
Friends of the boys who signed up furrowed their brows and teased that only girls played volleyball. The basketball players whom Moreno tried to recruit ended up running track or playing baseball.
The team still managed to get off the ground.
"Once you spike on someone, it's a rush, and they'll never know that feeling," Moreno said of the boys who didn't show. "It's like a slam dunk."
Things didn't necessarily come easily for Calvary Chapel, either, but the school with approximately an enrollment of 500 pieced together a team of nine players who had only experienced volleyball previously at lunchtime or at family picnics.
Fast forward to Thursday, and Calvary Chapel defeated winless Perris in four games in the Warriors' first match. Neither team could pass, set and crush the ball like the girls could or even do it in that particular order.
But after a minute-long rally in which both teams showed flashes of a bright future, the crowd roared, the referees laughed and the players smiled.
What's preventing scenes like this from repeating in gyms across the area? According to administrators, one concern is Title IX.
"As athletic directors, we have to look at if we add a boys sport, what would be a comparable girls sport?" said Temecula Chaparral athletic director Mike Rowan, whose school has a successful girls program but no boys program.
Another is the travel cost involved with sending teams on long road trips when so few teams in the area actually play.
Then again, aren't sports -- even volleyball -- about toughing it out?
"It's geared toward girls, but I enjoy it," said Calvary Chapel middle blocker Garrett Suchecki, who had taken the obligatory ribbing from football teammates about playing volleyball until they saw he could hit.
Nice work Garrett!
Posted by: ej | January 02, 2007 at 08:23 AM