Hillsborough County added the sport this fall, but few options exist after the season.
Hillsborough County’s volleyball scene is dominated by girls, but this year the boys are getting more opportunities to play.
The county introduced boys volleyball to all 52 middle schools for the 2017-18 school year, a decision sought by Hillsborough volleyball fans and players for several years. The addition came three years after Legacy Volleyball drafted petitions to add the sport in public schools in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
In the Plant City-area public middle schools — Marshall, Tomlin and Turkey Creek — boys volleyball started slow but gained traction as the regular season went on.
“Participation was rocky at first,” Turkey Creek coach Jenise Freeland said. “On our first day of tryouts we only had six boys.”
That can be chalked up to several factors. Tomlin coach Bert Gideons said he expected initial tryout numbers to be small considering many area boys are already involved in demanding sports such as football and travel baseball.
“It’s kind of hard to get them to check out a new sport,” Gideons said of students with prior commitments.
Coaches also had to shake preconceived notions of who, exactly, the sport is meant for.
“There were some misconceptions about volleyball being a ‘girl's sport,’” Freeland said. “We overcame that by showing some men's collegiate and Olympic volleyball to the students. That generated interest and we wound up with 11 boys on the team.”
But the most obvious reason for boys to hesitate is the lack of other options in Hillsborough County.
While some club programs around the area do field boys teams, boys who want to play for their schools after eighth grade would have to transfer to a private school offering the sport, such as Berkeley Prep in Tampa. The county’s public schools do not currently offer the sport, putting Durant, Plant City and Strawberry Crest out of play. In Turkey Creek’s case, that means 73% of the team — eight of those 11 players — are likely going to be out of luck when they move up to ninth grade in 2018.
“They would like to play club or continue to play in high school, but there are no clubs nearby for them,” Freeland said.
Gideons, who also runs Plant City Volleyball Academy, said he hopes the county’s middle school volleyball venture will be successful enough to convince the county to expand the sport to high schools.
Volleyball is far from the easiest activity to pick up and learn, but the coaches said their boys have made considerable improvements throughout the season.
“The boys made amazing progress this season and I'm so proud of their efforts,” Freeland said. “We went from having them not be able to simply bump the ball back and forth to each other to having them playing positions, having great ball control, consistent serves and blocking and spiking.”
As far as the audiences go, coaches say interest in the sport has only grown since the start of the season.
Gideons said Tomlin, which won all five of its regular-season games, has had good attendance and been “blessed with parent support.” Much of the early-season crowds were made up of girls, many of whom play volleyball, but the coach said more boys started coming to games as the season went on. Some even approached him about joining the team mid-season.
On Oct. 30, when Tomlin traveled to Turkey Creek to close out the season, fans of both teams packed the gymnasium bleachers and even brought signs for their favorite players. Tomlin won in two sets and clinched the Eastern Division title, and the team entered the eight-team county playoff this week. In Monday’s postseason action, Tomlin got off to a good start with a win over Wilson Middle School.
Playoffs concluded Wednesday evening at Webb Middle School in Tampa.
