Boys volleyball becomes Oregon’s newest high school sport

A dozen high school boys gathered around a volleyball net in a school gym in Bend on a recent Wednesday evening. As they squared off, the sound of squeaking shoes and shouts momentarily quieted. Every head turned to track the coach as he lobbed a ball over the net. An explosion of sound and motion followed, with the receiving side swiftly slamming the ball back to start the scrimmage.

The boys on this court have played together for the last two years on Summit High School’s club team. That team and others like it around the state don’t receive funding from a sponsoring school district. Instead, they support themselves, collectively paying thousands a year for coaching, travel, and tournaments.

But last month, the Oregon School Activities Association finalized making boys volleyball an official high school sport. Volleyball, an Olympic sport for both men and women, has long only been available to female students in Oregon high schools, which don’t offer co-ed teams. Now, advocates say more than 1,000 boys across the state have joined their school teams. Rural schools say these teams offer a relatively affordable way to expand activities and get more kids playing. At Bend’s Summit High School, the momentum has been building for years.

Summit senior Gavin White is the school’s varsity team captain.

“I think it’s a huge step for the sport,” he said. “It means that we’ll now get a lot more funding and hopefully we’ll get more boys to join and then the sport can just keep growing.”

Now 17, he started helping to develop teams in Central Oregon soon after he started playing at 14.

“I just played some beach volleyball and fun volleyball in the park and I was like, ‘Oh, I’d really like to make this an actual sport for me,’” he said.

White’s coach, Dan Drum, is basking in the moment. He said he’s always loved volleyball, but found few opportunities to play competitively while growing up.

“This is a dream of mine to have a high school boys volleyball program,” Drum said. “Unfortunately, I’ve aged out and that’s no longer an option for me, but if I can be part of it, absolutely sign me up.”

The process to bring boys volleyball to Oregon high schools started in 2023, when the OSAA labeled it an emerging sport. This allowed organizers to work with schools to field teams and gauge interest. An explosion of sign-ups followed, said Patrick Gibson, a key organizer of the effort.

“The growth is astronomical, from zero to 68 schools in four seasons,” Gibson said. “It’s pretty phenomenal.”

Gibson is the director of the Oregon High School Boys Volleyball Association. He said the sport is bringing in athletes who only want to compete in one sport and students from underrepresented communities — a whole new generation of volleyballers.

“It’s not just the same white kids playing football, basketball, and then now they’re going to do volleyball,” Gibson said. “We are reaching new students, and that’s a really rewarding thing for me as well.”

Given public education’s looming budget deficits and funding uncertainty, the OSAA’s October vote surprised some, even die-hard supporters like Gibson. After it was announced that the inaugural season would take place in spring 2026, schools across that state were given just a few weeks to decide whether to participate.

For rural schools like Dalles High School in Wasco County and Crook County High School in Prineville, the choice offered an affordable way to reach more student athletes, since the facilities and equipment were already in place.

Crook County High School’s Athletic Director Rob Bonner said the newness of the sport takes the pressure off boys who are just learning, which keeps them engaged, and that’s the real goal of school activities.

“This had a different feel to it because they were doing something for the first time as a group,” Bonner said. “It wasn’t scary to come out and try something new because everybody was on the same page.”

Two of Oregon’s largest districts, Portland Public Schools and Beaverton School District, decided against offering boys volleyball this year. The districts cited budget constraints and the difficulty of launching a new sport in the middle of the school year. Gibson said this was a blow since a number of schools in those districts participated over the last two years, when boys volleyball was an emerging sport.

“We had students from seven schools out of the nine in the Portland Interscholastic League participate last year,” he said. “It all started there and it’s sad that budgets are holding us back.”

Athletic directors estimated that volleyball can cost a school district anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000 a year, depending on how many teams it has.

At Summit High in Bend, junior Aiden Woods started playing volleyball just a couple of years ago and quickly fell for it.

“It’s a sport for everybody, honestly,” he said. “Whatever kind of sports you’ve done before, whether you do sports, don’t do sports, there’s a spot for you.”

His team has won back-to-back state titles since it joined the emerging sport process. Now, they’re looking forward to vying for an official state win, and starting next spring, they’ll have a lot more competition.

This story was reported by freelancer Jen Baires. She can be reached atjbaires@opb.org.

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