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Our customer service team can be reached at <a href="mailto:circulation@metln.org">circulation@metln.org</a> during business hours at <a href="tel:2077916000">(207) 791-6000</a>.<br>Several schools have joined an effort to make the club sport an official varsity offering, though steps and challenges remain.<br>You are able to gift <span class="subscriber-message-share-count">5</span> more articles this month.<br>Anyone can access the link you share with no account required. <a href="/article-gifting">Learn more</a>.<br>With a <span class="sitename">Press Herald</span> subscription, you can gift 5 articles each month.<br>It looks like you do not have any active subscriptions. To get one, <a class="subscriptions-link" href="">go to the subscriptions page</a>.<br>With a <span class="sitename">Press Herald</span> subscription, you can gift 5 articles each month.<br>Rob Childs is the coach of the Marshwood High School girls volleyball team and also coaches a boys volleyball team that competes in a spring league. Boys volleyball may be coming to Maine as an official, sanctioned high school sport. <span class="credit"> <i>Gregory Rec/Portland Press Heral</i></span> <br>Five New England states offer high school boys volleyball. Maine is the lone exception.<br>Marshwood High School girls volleyball coach Rob Childs thinks it’s about time that changes.<br>“‘Hey Coach, is it going to be a full sport yet?’ I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that question asked to me in the last three-plus years,” he said. “I think it’s a no-brainer. Across the country … it’s just so popular right now.”<br>Childs could be getting his wish. A push that began last year to add boys volleyball to the list of the Maine Principals’ Association’s offerings of sanctioned sports is gaining momentum, with several schools already on board to field teams for the spring of 2026.<div id="exco-adslot" class="opscoad-exco-adslot" data-unit="/6119/pressherald.com/sports" style="display: block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; width:100%;"></div><br>More hurdles need to be cleared — the sport needs to be approved by the MPA’s management committee, which will meet in the spring — but boys volleyball has never been closer to obtaining a full-fledged, varsity designation in Maine.<br>“The overall feeling from the (MPA volleyball) committee was that it’s coming, it’s going to happen,” said Falmouth coach Larry Nichols, who has spearheaded efforts to elevate boys volleyball beyond its current status as a club sport. “(And) whether it’s ’26, that could happen.”<div class="ad-injection"><span class="before-injected-ad ad-notice">Advertisement</span><div id="adslot1" class="injectable-ad-slot opscoad-adPosition1" data-unit="/6119/pressherald.com/sports" data-ad-index="1" style="display: block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; width:100%;"></div></div><br>MPA Assistant Executive Director Mike Bisson, who oversees volleyball and who invited Nichols to a committee meeting in fall 2023 to make the pitch, said he’s optimistic about the sport being offered in 2026.<br>“I think there’s a pretty good chance it happens,” he said. “It seems to have really exploded on the scene the last two, three years.”<br>That enthusiasm stems both from the growing popularity of club leagues, played Down East and in southern Maine, and a volleyball committee meeting Dec. 11, which took place roughly a week after a survey was sent to schools asking if they would commit to fielding a team in 2026. The purpose, Nichols said, was to gauge whether there was enough support for the sport to warrant sending it along to the management committee for approval.<br>The participation of at least 10 schools is required for the MPA to offer a championship, Bisson said. Despite the short turnaround, four schools — Marshwood, Falmouth, Washington Academy and Mount Desert Island — said they could support a team, according to Nichols. Three more — Deering, Ashland and Morse — said they could “most likely” support one.<br>In addition, four more schools were confident they could field a team but needed to confirm, and schools such as Gorham, Cape Elizabeth, Yarmouth, Scarborough and Biddeford didn’t respond but have had teams compete in a boy’s volleyball league that takes place in the weeks between the winter and spring seasons.<br>“To have seven teams this far out say they’re going to have a team was encouraging,” Nichols said. “The fact that it’s spread out is encouraging. If it was just a pocket around Portland, then I’d be nervous. I don’t think the MPA would be, rightfully so, interested in going much further with it.”<div class="ad-injection"><span class="before-injected-ad ad-notice">Advertisement</span><div id="adslot2" class="injectable-ad-slot opscoad-adPosition2" data-unit="/6119/pressherald.com/sports" data-ad-index="2" style="display: block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; width:100%;"></div></div><br>If the sport gets approved by the management committee, it’ll be the first time, Bisson believes, that the boy’s version of a sport follows the establishment of the girls version. Girls volleyball has been a championship sport in Maine since 1997.<br>“That’s a cool aspect,” he said. “That is an interesting shift. <a href="https://www.pressherald.com/2021/09/09/pandemic-fails-to-slow-growth-of-high-school-volleyball-in-maine/">Girls volleyball has just been an entrenched activity</a> and been so popular around the country. And then when you see it played, you’re like ‘Boy, I’d like to play that.'”<br>The popularity of boys volleyball has been on the rise as well. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, the number of states offering the sport at the varsity or club level rose from 21 in 2013-14 to 29 in 2023-24, and the number of participants has climbed from 52,149 to 85,255 — a 63% increase.<br>That interest has also started to show itself in Maine, where club competitions and leagues have popped up in northern and southern parts of the state, resulting in nearly 30 schools fielding teams, according to Yarmouth athletic director and volleyball committee member Sarah Holmes.<br>The first was a league run by the Downeast Athletic Conference, and in 2022 Nichols helped organize a southern Maine league that holds its short season in the period between basketball championships and the start of spring sports, when the gyms are not being used. In the first year, Falmouth, Gorham, Deering, Marshwood, Yarmouth and Biddeford played. Since then, Morse, Kennebunk, Massabesic and Cape Elizabeth are among the schools that have joined in.<br>Participation has gone up, and so has the experience level of the players. And it’s shown.<div class="ad-injection"><span class="before-injected-ad ad-notice">Advertisement</span><div id="adslot3" class="injectable-ad-slot opscoad-adPosition2" data-unit="/6119/pressherald.com/sports" data-ad-index="3" style="display: block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; width:100%;"></div></div><br>“In my freshman year, it felt like gym class volleyball. Not a lot of people knew what they were doing, they were kind of just flailing about,” said Adam Conklin, 17, a Falmouth senior who plays for the school’s team as well as the Maine Juniors 18U club team. “But at the most recent tournament, people were a lot better and it was surprising me. … It was almost on par with the (Maine Juniors) club.”<br>Interest has been rising, but Conklin said making it a varsity sport would cause it to shoot up even more dramatically.<br>“Oh, I think the amount of teams would at least double,” he said. “A couple of my friends have said they think the season’s too short, and they’d play if it was something real.”<br>Conklin’s classmate and teammate on both Maine Juniors and Falmouth, Chris Hwang, also thinks varsity status would lead to people being more willing to give it a shot.<br>“People know it’s a thing, but they don’t want to join because of outside opinions on it. People would be like ‘Oh, it’s kind of a girly sport’ and stuff,” said Hwang, 17. “I feel like if it became a sanctioned sport, then it definitely would be less stigmatized, because then people would be like ‘Oh, this is serious.'”<br>Both Conklin and Hwang said volleyball would be an easy sell with that status, given the sport’s relentless action, teamwork and involvement of every player on the floor.<div class="ad-injection"><span class="before-injected-ad ad-notice">Advertisement</span><div id="adslot4" class="injectable-ad-slot opscoad-adPosition2" data-unit="/6119/pressherald.com/sports" data-ad-index="4" style="display: block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; width:100%;"></div></div><br>“People want to play volleyball,” Conklin said. “But they don’t know where to go.”<br>At Marshwood, Childs has seen girls volleyball in Maine take off. And he said that boys volleyball would see a similar surge with sanctioning.<br>“If it does get recognized as a varsity sport, you’re going to see it blow up,” he said.<br>Childs said offering boys volleyball in the spring makes sense for a variety of reasons.<br>“Athletic directors don’t have to spend a lot of money right now, at least immediately, on equipment if they’ve already got a girls program,” he said. “Usually, the coach that coaches girls will try to get it going. And then you’ve really (just) got to worry about transportation costs. There are some other things, but it’s not going to cost a lot.<br>“And then, on top of that, it’s a spring sport. What happens in Maine in the spring? Rainouts, the fields aren’t ever ready, you’re not sure what’s going on. And you have an opportunity to have an indoor sport, when there’s no indoor sport usage in the gym in the spring.”<div class="ad-injection"><span class="before-injected-ad ad-notice">Advertisement</span><div id="adslot5" class="injectable-ad-slot opscoad-adPosition2" data-unit="/6119/pressherald.com/sports" data-ad-index="5" style="display: block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; width:100%;"></div></div><br>Holmes said the sport could make sense at schools that struggle to get enough numbers for other spring offerings.<br>“For some of our smaller schools, who maybe can’t field a baseball team or a lacrosse team, volleyball is a perfect sport for them,” she said. “You only need six, maybe seven kids to really get going.”<br>At the same time, there are challenges. Volleyball may not be an expensive sport, but adding it could still be a strain on tight school budgets. Adding a boys sport could affect Title IX compliance. Transportation logistics can get complicated. For some schools, equipment needs to either be purchased or modified. At Yarmouth, Holmes said, the batting cages are fixed in place, and so the school would need to make alterations there to free up the gym for play when the baseball and softball teams need to be indoors.<br>“I know some of those seem trivial, but for schools, they’re legitimate issues,” Bisson said.<br>Then there’s the turnout question. Schools have been able to field boys volleyball teams in between seasons when there are no other sports going on. The available pool of players could shrink if the season moves to the spring.<br>“When you get to a point where the kids have to choose between playing another spring sport that they may have been playing — track or lacrosse or baseball or tennis — now they have to make a decision, ‘Hey, am I going to commit to a boys volleyball team?'” Bisson said. “I think that’s a whole different question, and that’s the answer we need.”<div class="ad-injection"><span class="before-injected-ad ad-notice">Advertisement</span><div id="adslot6" class="injectable-ad-slot opscoad-adPosition2" data-unit="/6119/pressherald.com/sports" data-ad-index="6" style="display: block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; width:100%;"></div></div><br>That turnout question can extend to other sports. Volleyball’s rising popularity among girls has come at the expense of participation numbers in other fall sports, <a href="https://www.pressherald.com/2023/10/14/with-roster-sizes-declining-maine-field-hockey-coaches-propose-a-smaller-solution/">most notably field hockey</a>. For schools that have enough difficulty getting athletes to come out for their spring sports, the addition of volleyball could make filling those rosters even tougher.<br>“That’s a very fair statement, I think,” Bisson said. “But that’s a question every committee asks anytime we look at adding an activity, there are concerns about (affecting) other sports, and how many sports can a school offer in a season?”<br>Volleyball players in the state hope there’s one more coming.<br>“I would love that,” Conklin said. “(Now) it’s like a club for fun, and a lot of people don’t take it seriously. But I would love if it were serious. That’s just a great thing to have in the school, too.”<br>We invite you to add your comments. We encourage a thoughtful exchange of ideas and information on this website. By joining the conversation, you are agreeing to <a href="/commenting-terms/" target="_parent">our commenting policy and terms of use</a>. More information is found on our <a href="/conversations-faq/">FAQs</a>. You can <a href="#" class="modify-screenname">modify your screen name here</a>.<br>Comments are managed by our staff during regular business hours Monday through Friday as well as limited hours on Saturday and Sunday. Comments held for moderation outside of those hours may take longer to approve.<br><br>Please <a href="#" data-mg2-action="login">sign into</a> your Press Herald account to participate in conversations below. If you do not have an account, you can <a href="#" data-mtm-signup data-mtm-client-id="wmQ0v7N8FtL1tuoKt1DyaiWWXiBdIY9E">register</a> or <a href="/subscribe" target="_blank">subscribe</a>. 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