Every year at Camas High School (CHS), students are required to complete and present a senior project in order to graduate. William Chen (12) and Caleb Russell (12) share an interest in volleyball and decided to incorporate that into their project. Although the boys played volleyball for several years, they did not find many opportunities to play in Camas.
“My dad got me into [volleyball] and when I moved over here, it was like I couldn’t find anything for the boys’ volleyball team,” Chen said.
Chen and Russell play on a club volleyball team together. However, they have to go to Oregon for it. This led them to come up with an idea for their collaborative project: bringing boys’ volleyball to CHS.
“I’m the mentor for their senior project, so they came to me and they wanted to do something since they’re very involved in volleyball and they play on a club volleyball team themselves,” CHS Health and Fitness Teacher Michelle Ford said. “They love the sport and they thought it would be fun to create an activity for the school.”
The whole project leads up to a tournament against other schools, which they planned for Saturday, April 19. Part of the project includes communicating with other schools to get more teams to play in their tournament, which they are currently working on.
Until then, the boys plan to host tryouts, create teams, and hold practices throughout March to prepare the players for the big game. Despite the competitive prospect, this activity is designed to be inclusive to all boys who are interested.
“I think based upon [numbers for tryouts] we can probably make more than one team because they want to try out something new and I don’t really want to take that away from them,” Russell said. “[I want to] give them a new opportunity.”
Chen and Russell’s goal for this project is not only to create a winning team, but to get boys’ volleyball out there in the process.
“I want to have a high school volleyball team to get more boys to like playing volleyball for the school,” Chen said.
They also hope to take this experience and spread it beyond CHS to give more people a chance to partake in what they love.
“My goal is to try and expand [boys’ volleyball] to other people and schools in Washington, get other boys more excited, get the word out, and hopefully we can make it an actual thing,” Russell said.
Tryouts will take place in the CHS gym from 12 pm to 2 pm on Sunday, February 23.
