The Boys (458)

Believe it or not, there is boys volleyball. In Iowa it is not super popular, but in other big cities it is very popular, with almost as many guys teams as girls teams. When we go to national tournaments or qualifiers it is sometimes also a boys tournament. They will have the girls games on certain courts and the boys teams on other courts. Last year my team went to the President's Day Classic, which is not a qualifier for girls, but it was a qualifier for the boys teams. It was the only tournament last year that we went to that also had a boys division playing in it. It was really neat to see, and a bit weird, because I was not used to seeing guys playing volleyball at such a high skill level. The skill level of the U18 Open boys was incredible, of course they all jump so high and have so much power. We were watching the boys U18 Open finals with at least 200 other people surrounding the court to watch. 

In Iowa, we have very few boys volleyball teams. There are no school teams for boys, and for club there are only a few.  The club I played for last year, Adrenaline Volleyball Academy, had a boys team. It was made up of guys from age 12 to 18 but it had to be a U18 team since the oldest guy was in the 18s age group. They won the boys regionals and were the best guys team in the state, but compared to other states with hundreds of guys teams, they weren't at that skill level. 

High Performance (which I blogged about earlier) also has boys teams. In Iowa, they have less teams than the girls because of the smaller number of boys that play volleyball. They have a U15 team and a U18 team, which both compete in the HP nationals.  

Right now there are lots of opportunities for guys to play volleyball, and people who run the programs like High Performance and clubs who have boys teams are trying to expand the game for boys. Another opportunity for boys to play is playing now on a girls team. If they are 14 or under, they are able to play on a girls club team, but not any older because then they view it as unfair for a boy to be playing against girls. Other opportunities that are more for fun are sand and indoor leagues, like Volley's, where you can play 6s, 4s, or doubles. There are many ways to get more guys to play volleyball, but I think one of the easiest ways, that doesn't already exist, would be to have boys high school teams in Iowa.