The Spike Boys: Upperclassmen form a boys volleyball team despite many members having little experience

Junior Alex Schwarzenberger holds the volleyball up in the air, tosses it up and smacks it over the net — the St. James players dive for it but it’s already hit the ground.

“YEAAAAHHHH!”

Senior Noah Gould grabs Alex’s shoulders and shakes him with excitement, the rest of the volleyball team rallies around him giving Alex high fives and pats on the back. They’ve now increased their lead to 12-6 against St. James, the No. 1 team in the league, who has won the state championship nine times.

While they lost the set 25-19, they felt they improved in their communication and teamwork, a big success considering a majority of the team learned the sport two weeks prior.

A mix of Noah’s love for the sport and collecting Creativity, Activity and Service hours for IB inspired him to start the team. After hosting tryouts in February, with eight people showing up, the final roster included seniors John Berkshire-Lewis, Tristan Eddy, Kenny McCullough and Noah, and juniors Sam Fatino, Roberto Galicia, Finnian Higgins, Tyler Kirchhoff and Alex. With only three experienced club players on the team and no school recognition, their success is supported by knee pads and their own initiative to improve. 

Like lacrosse, boys volleyball is not an official sport of the Kansas State High School Activities Association. Noah reached out to KSHSAA to try and get it approved as a sport, but KSHSAA rules wouldn’t allow it because there needs to be an equal number of girls and boys sports. So he formed his own team. 

To actually start a team, Noah had to find a league to join. While they’re an East-exclusive team and unofficially represent the school, they don’t receive school funding as it’s not a KSHSAA sport, leaving them on their own to fund team expenses.

Each of the nine players pitched in $200 to help with league fees, jerseys, practices, equipment and other expenses. Initially at $7,000, Noah worked to cut the cost to about $2,000 by finding cheaper places to practice, better deals on jerseys and having everyone bring their own volleyballs to practice.

To lower costs, the team now practices at the New Century Fieldhouse 30 minutes away from 8-10 p.m. By the time they leave, the rest of the volleyball courts are dark and quiet and their cars are the few remaining in the parking lot.

“We have to keep focused a lot in practice,” Alex said. “A lot of times we get off track and then are not able to work as much. We’re working on getting more and more serious at practice and not messing around and trying on every point in the game.”

As one of the three experienced players on the team, Noah spends practice shouting reminders for players to hold their arms parallel to the ground and bend their knees. But he needed someone else to coach so he could focus on his own game. At 9:30 p.m. on the night the team registration form was due, Noah called senior Kale Swanson asking if he wanted to coach. 

Other than recreational beach volleyball pastimes over the summer, Kale has limited volleyball experience. So, what made him the right person for head coach?

“Everyone loves Kale,” Noah said. “He’s a super amazing guy and his charisma and lightheartedness balances out my somewhat overbearingness. I am an intense player and I want this team to be good, but a lot of the people are new. So having Kale there balances out my aggressive, competitive intensity with this super amazing, happy, nice person as a coach.”

Kale manages the organizational aspects of coaching — emailing parents, creating informational flyers and wearing a suit to every game, a requirement Noah added to his unofficial contract. He also provides occasional pointers on hitting and boosts overall team confidence, especially during their first game against rival and No. 2 in the league: Rockhurst.

“Keeping morale up is really important because I can see the faces of all my players and I can see them all tensed up and they get freaked out because it’s a bunch of really big Rock guys,” Kale said. “People get nervous. It’s so important to just breathe, and [I’m] making jokes for the team, talking to them, reassuring them the best I can, whatever happens, have fun.”

Even when their legs felt like one massive bruise from diving on the court and their arms turned strawberry pink from bumping the ball, the team all felt the same way about the game: “It went better than I thought.” 

They didn’t expect a victory but were encouraged by their improvements. While they lost all three sets, they scored more points with each game. 

“Honestly, it’s pretty inspiring, because we already have a lot of potential seeing that we’re all just playing against one of the best teams in the league, and we did pretty well without knowing the rotations,” John said.

After their first match, they determined passing and communication to be their areas in need of improvement. At their next practice, they got to work. 

“You need to call top because I’m going to do a top spin,” Noah shouts, instructing them to identify the type of serve he does.

He then jumps four feet in the air, the ball flying up another 20, and spikes the ball to the other side of the net as it comes down.

By the end of practice, they’d split into groups of three to practice passing and Kenny and Finnian successfully block Noah’s spike, celebrating with high-fives and bicep flexes.

“We’re getting a feel [for] how strategy works, how rotations work instead of literally just rotating a circle,” Finnian said. “It’s more competitive.”

Finnian’s favorite part so far is just being able to hit the ball. He plays on a recreational team as well, but the main goal then was to get the ball over the net at all costs. He loves the strategy and communication he’s learned on this team.

They all want to grow as stronger athletes, and look forward to taking on Rockhurst later this season.

In terms of the program’s future, they all hope, including the seniors, that the team continues next year and eventually is recognized as a KSHSAA sport. But until then, they’ll continue to represent East the best they can. 

“I’ve got everything set up and essentially created guidelines on how to do it,” Noah said. “At the end of the year, I want to coach someone, ‘OK, this is how you’re going to do it next year,’ because I really, really want this program to continue and I want us to sort of be like this beacon that maybe even some of the other SMSD schools could start it.”