KIMBERLY (NBC 26) — Boys high school volleyball is one of the fastest growing sports in all of the country. In this week’s Youth Sports: Beyond the Score, NBC 26 talked with the Kimberly Papermakers boys volleyball team to find out why.
“I think the more that I can impact the community and make it a wider growing sport, the better it is,” said Kimberly senior Jack Hruzek.
Fast paced. High stakes. Intense. Volleyball lovers say, watching or playing the sport can be a shot of adrenaline.
“(If) it's a match point, it feels like you’re in a totally different room,” Hruzek said.
According to a study from the Wall Street Journal, the number of boys participating in volleyball has grown by 56% in the last decade.
“The college level for girls for women has taken off and it’s on ESPN, it’s on Bally sports, it’s always on tv and I think the boys see that and we have a lot of great high school coaches in Wisconsin and they just create a really fun culture,” said Kimberly assistant coach Tara Krause, who played at UWGB.
St. Norbert men’s coach B.J Bryant says, the only coverage men’s volleyball sees at a national level - outside of the Olympics - is predominantly the NCAA championships.
“Those championships are incredible, but that’s one tiny little window in a sports landscape and a sports broadcast setup that it kind of gets lost in,” he said.
Matt Seidl is an assistant at St. Norbert and also the head coach at Kimberly high school, he says, it starts at the youth level.
“Just say come in the gym and jump and hit the ball hard,” he said. “And that’s what I do with the younger kids here to get kids excited about the sport. That's the first thing we do. We just run, jump high and hit the ball hard."
Kimberly holds youth camps in the summer, where the high school players will interact with the youth.
“Connecting with the younger generation is so much fun, because they kind of just swarm you and it’s just really fun to share that knowledge that you have to the younger generation to just help grow the sport,” Hruzek said.
36 states have sanctioned high school boys high school volleyball, Wisconsin is 1 of only 3 to have both play in the fall. Bryant believes making it a spring sport would help the growth.
“States like Illinois that have volleyball in the spring have far more schools that are sanctioning it,” he said. “I mean, we have just over 70 boys programs in the state right now. Illinois, I think, has just over 200 boys high school teams.”
Even though there’s a ways to go in terms of growing boys volleyball – the sport has come a long way.
“When I was freshman, only like 15 people tried out and then from my sophomore year it jumped to like 20 then from then on it’s just been growing,” said Owen Krause.
“Just the athleticism is just it’s night and day compared to even 5-10 years ago. These guys and women are just incredible athletes,” said Seidl.
