For one Chatham County school, volleyball action will start a few months early in 2024.
Jordan-Matthews is rolling out a boys volleyball team this spring for the first time in school history. The team will compete in the North Carolina Boys High School Volleyball Association, as boys volleyball is a club sport not sanctioned by the North Carolina High School Athletic Association.
The Jets will be led by current volleyball head coach Johnny Alston and football assistant coach Jordan Maness. They will host their first game of the season against Hillside on March 5.
“We view it as another opportunity to give kids a chance to participate and be a part of something,” Jordan-Matthews Athletic Director Barry West said.
Interest for a boys volleyball team started brewing in the fall as students often played the sport for fun in physical education classes. At first, students were asking if they could create an intramural league, but seeing that schools were already competing against each other in North Carolina, West presented a bigger opportunity.
“This is going to be exactly what they’ve been doing, but in a more formal environment,” West said.
With the commitments from at least 15 boys interested in playing competitively, Jordan-Matthews applied to join the N.C. Boys High School Volleyball Association, a club league that began with four teams in 2016 and has since expanded to over 80 schools across the state.
A grant from the Carolina Region N.C. Boys Volleyball Development Fund will help the team pay for any necessary expenses.
West views boys volleyball as a chance for kids that don’t usually play spring sports to stay active during the season. Several of the boys on the team are actually soccer players that don’t play anything else.
“For the guys in the spring, the choices are golf, tennis, track and baseball, being tennis and golf are very specialized,” West said. “This gives them another option.”
Said West, “Some of our colleagues in the county, they offer lacrosse, and we don’t have the interest, the equipment nor the personnel to field a lacrosse team. But volleyball, we’ve already got the equipment. The upstart cost is very minimal, and that’s a big part about it.”