Author Spotlight
Addy Newman
Feet shuffle across the sand at Nall Avenue Church of Nazarene’s outdoor volleyball courts as a volleyball flies over the net after a powerful spike made by junior Jack Reeves. The six boys, all amateur volleyball players, on the other side of the net prepare for the next move, yelling to each other as the ball flies towards the ground.
Junior Mete Ozkan dives with his hands extended to stop the ball from hitting the sand. The ball is brought back up and junior Grant Kimmel spikes the ball back to the other side.
The ball plunges into the ground — Ozkan and Kimmel’s team have won the point.
“It just gets intense,” founder and junior Christian Shaw said, “It’s kind of like in [our] blood.”
The crowd of four friends goes wild while the song “Eye of the Tiger” blasts loudly from a speaker.
“It’s a lot of fun to score points and set people up on a spike,” Reeves said. “It’s a great atmosphere. Everyone loves it. [Everybody] always has a great time, and it gets competitive too. It’s just so fun.”
Back in the fall, Shaw and Kimmel came up with the idea of starting a club where boys could play volleyball without demanding practices and stressful tryouts.
“I feel like every other sport has a boys team at East and volleyball was the only one [that doesn’t],” Kimmel said. “I didn’t even know East had a [boys volleyball] team, to be honest. We were just like, it’d be a fun, cool sport to [make a club for].”
Just after Shaw and Kimmel came up with the idea, Reeves was added to a group chat for the club before it started. He was skeptical at first and wasn’t sure how many people would want to join. After more and more friends showed interest, Reeves helped kick off the club by recruiting social studies teacher Alex Henton as their club sponsor and coordinating their meeting times.
Ozkan isn’t a founder, but is at the club two to three times a month, attending the matches. After joining the team GroupMe and showing up to the courts for the first meet, Ozkan decided to continue attending. The funny comments made throughout the whole game, points being won with comedic celebrations and the overall camaraderie encouraged him to keep showing up.
“Volleyball is kind of a lesser-played sport,” Ozkan said. “I think a lot of people want to learn how to play and just have fun. A lot of people do it in gym class and have fun with it, so [the founders] wanted to take it outside of school.”
The Club Fair, held on Dec. 3, gave them recognition. This helped the club recruit students who weren’t just juniors. After being able to connect with other grades, their GroupMe went up from their small group of friends to about 80 students.
“I’ve noticed that a lot of guys said they wanted to play volleyball,” Reeves said. “So we tried to make that a reality as much as we possibly could.”
Members usually meet about two to three times a month, and meeting lengths vary from one to two hours, depending on how much everyone enjoys it.
At the first meeting, about 20 juniors showed up. The ball was knocked around jokingly, but quickly rivalries and competitiveness began to escalate.
“Sometimes it can get a little heated,” Reeves said. “I usually play against Ozkan and Kimmel. It’s a lot of fun, you get pretty riled up.”
The team captains, Kimmel and Shaw, chosen randomly, had picked the teams prior, trying to make them as even as possible by dividing the boys by skill level so one team didn’t dominate the other entirely.
Shouts from both sides brought immense competitiveness as the scores made their way closer to 25 for the win, and the scores were neck and neck the entire game.
Team leaders will send fun texts on team group chats to coordinate everyone to wear the same color shirt for their match. Now, more students from other grades have begun to show up.
Kimmel, Shaw and Reeves hope their club can start playing in one of the SM East gyms, and they plan on hosting a tournament with more members. They also aim to have school-wide tournaments with fundraising opportunities.
“We’re just a club that’s trying to have fun,” said Shaw. “The whole thing is so anyone can play, instead of having to try out or do something silly.”
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