BSHS is finally in the heart of spring with dreams of the ocean, sandy beaches and…volleyball? Or at least that’s what a group of eight BSSD boys have on their minds, as they recently formed the first male Blue Springs volleyball team, a combined force of BSHS, BSSHS and two middle school students.

Sophomore Thomas Perry, who been playing club for two years, thought having a school volleyball team would be a great experience.

“There just weren’t a lot of people doing it, so everyone else just saw it as fun and we all decided to join up,” Perry said.

While there are a few players with more experience, most are novices at the sport. Perry is a hitter on the team and enjoys the simplicity of the sport.

“Volleyball can be broken down into three things: pass, set, hit. I am a hitter, and I play on the outside. The best passers are normally in the back row. Cade Berg (from South) is our setter. It’s a fairly simple game. (If) the ball lands in the lines on your side, it’s the other teams point,” Perry said.

The team practices once a week for an hour and half to two hours, preparing for their Tuesday and Thursday games every other week.

“We practice once a week, and we do a lot of passing drills, lots of fundamental stuff because we are a new team,” Perry said.

Perry recruited sophomore Griffin Radford,  who is new to volleyball. Radford noted that fundamentals and playing situations are emphasized in practice.

“We practice for an hour and a half to two hours. We warm up with dynamics, and then we are setting it, passing it, spiking it, hitting it, serving it and then we sort of scrimmage each other at the end,” Radford said.

As  a passer on the team, Radford excels at the defensive aspect.

“My position on the team is usually back row because I am pretty good at passing. Back row is always fun because you get to pass but it is also fun to spike every once in a while,” Perry said.  

So far the Blue Springs team has won both of their games by staggering margins.

“We’ve played two games and we’ve won both of them. One of the scores we won 25-4 and the other we won 25-8. We did pretty good,” Radford said.

A good start to their season has left Perry excited for games to come.

“The game I am looking forward to is Rockhurst because they have a very big team of over 20 people. In order to prepare for the game we are going to practice a lot. We work hard and just carry on with our normal routine,” Perry said.

Although the 2-0 team has been doing great, Radford still thinks there are things to improve at.

“Communication is something we need to improve on. We are all really good players individually but sometimes we have miscommunications and that’s how they score,” Radford said.

Radford isn’t alone in his way of thinking, but Perry has no problem pointing out something his team can’t be beat at: Hustle.

“We don’t communicate very well but we do hustle. We play pretty hard and that’s what we probably do the best, just hustle,” Perry said.

The boys hope for the absolute best moving forward in the season.

“My team goal is to have us play smoothly as a team because if you can play smoothly and as a team you have a better chance of winning, and it looks better,“ Perry said.

While Perry’s goal is more team oriented, Radford wanted to look at a bigger picture.

“Since it’s our first year playing together, our goal is definitely winning a lot of games, make it to where we will have a good future in Blue Springs Volleyball, but also we are trying to incorporate male volleyball into our school. I think that would be a lot of fun and that a lot of guys, once they know about it, are going to like it and try out,” Radford said.

The next time the boys play will be Tuesday at St. Michael’s.