Boys Volleyball at DJDS

Bump, set, spike; As DJDS continues to foster a strong sports culture, people wonder if there is room for another team on the DJDS roster. Since the beginning of the school, there has always been a girl’s volleyball team, but will there be a boy’s team? The idea of a boy's volleyball team has been floating around the gym and the hallways and it’s time to uncover the answer to this debate. 

The students themselves have played a significant role in fueling the enthusiasm for this initiative. “Having a boy’s volleyball team would mean a lot, I think it would be really fun and would give us boys more opportunities to represent our school through the sport we love,” said Drew Kaplan, 9th grader. Drew’s thoughts about this potential team are also mirrored and echoed by many others, emphasizing the want and eagerness throughout the school to be a part of this team.  

“The excitement the kids have brought has made me want to figure this out, and make it work,” said Josh Lake, DJDS’ Athletic director. 

However, despite this fact, there is still some worry among some students. Bella Strear, a DJDS 8th-grade student, worries that this will take away from the girl's sports, for both high school and middle school sports. “If there was a boy's volleyball team it would really take away from girl’s volleyball, which is debatably the only sports girls are good at, besides girl's basketball,” said Strear. “I think It would probably be negative; boys’ sports are already much more popular at this school and once they learn it they will just be better because boys are stronger than girls and it would just be more interesting."

“We have a couple of people who would be interested in coaching this team, one is our legendary girl's volleyball coach, Jerry Rotenberg,” said Josh Lake. While we have most of the supplies and materials, it seems that the biggest challenge is protecting the baseball program, while still catering to the interest and excitement of everyone else. In order to solve this problem the school would have to have the boy's volleyball team play games on Wednesdays and practice on Fridays so it wouldn’t conflict with baseball, so that the kids who play baseball can also be able to play volleyball. 

One other challenge that has yet to be fully addressed, is whether or not there would be a High School and a Middle School team, or just High School or just Middle School teams. This question has been talked about throughout the school and the athletics department. 

If a ‘real team’ is not possible there are other options such as a tournament or a sort of round-robin league, where we would play a few rounds of matches with a couple of schools. However, the chances of this happening are actually quite good. 

“I think within the next 6 months the odds are better than 50%,” said Josh Lake. “I’m going to start reaching out to other schools after fall break to see where other schools are at."

 The General message from this seems to be that even if we can just find 2-3 schools that are in the same situation as us, we're ready to play ball.