Early this October, the Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA) sanctioned boys volleyball in Oregon. Unfortunately on Oct. 15 the Portland Public Schools district turned its back on boys volleyball when the Portland Interscholastic League (PIL) leadership informed the athletic directors that no school with a boys volleyball team in PIL were allowed to compete in the OSAA season this spring.

 The girls and boys volleyball teams at Cleveland received the devastating information on Friday, Oct. 17 from head girls and boys volleyball coaches, Alex Gainer and Katie Young, in the Cleveland library. 

The serious tone in the room and silent shock from all three girls’ volleyball teams and the boys’ team filled the space. So many thoughts and emotions were stirring while receiving this news that it felt unreal. 

“Boys volleyball means everything to me,” said Jack Coracci, captain of the boys team. “I started my freshman year and I’ve been playing ever since. I’ve played club for two years. My sophomore year we went to states. It was maybe the most amazing experience of my life. And three of those guys who were on the states team are on the team now and all I want is to finish off my senior year with these guys. 

“I mean, they mean so much to me,” Coracci continued. “And you know, I’ve known them for forever, and this might be the last time I ever get to play volleyball with them or get to play volleyball in general. So this is extremely important to me and it hurts so bad to get it ripped away.”

Volleyball players say the sport is amazing to play, brings people together and even saves people’s lives. Committing towards this sport means everything to those who play and stabilizes people emotionally and physically. Having an outlet for stress and a place to simply have fun and be a part of a community truly changes lives. 

“During my first season, I would miss school a lot but with volleyball that couldn’t happen anymore and I ended up actually losing playing time because of that. But after a week or so, I started going to school more, my grades actually did improve. Especially during finals, just because I was at school on time and ready to learn,” said Truett Maloney, a sophomore on the boys team. 

Losing the sport that motivates you to attend classes and be committed to learning can result in a slump that negatively impacts everyone. 

“I don’t even know why they are doing this. In my opinion there is not good enough of a reason, just to be able to reject an entire district of people from being able to play this sport that they love. It’s kind of just heartbreaking and just doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” said senior team member Jason Adams. 

“Their biggest reason for not allowing the PIL to participate is funding and Title IX concerns. Athletic directors did ask PIL leadership if teams could continue to fund themselves and participate. The answer was ‘no’ due to equity issues. Maybe five schools have teams that can fund themselves, but the other four PIL schools cannot. The PIL’s stance is that either all nine schools participate or none at all,” said Young, the boys coach. 

Cleveland has fielded a boys volleyball team as a club sport for over five years. When OSAA finally sanctioned boys volleyball for all of Oregon it felt like a sense of security that boys volleyball finally was going to be an official sport. The district’s decision to not allow any of the PIL schools to play in the next OSAA season in the spring came as a complete shock to many. 

“Cleveland was one of the few schools that actually got boys volleyball in Oregon up and running, so for them to not let us compete is wild. It’s not like we are a new school that just started competing in the last year or two. We’ve been doing this from the beginning,” said Young. 

Not only is PIL not allowing the boys team to compete in the OSAA season, but also not allowed to be an official team or club team. PIL will not allow the boys to be a club team, which means that they are not allowed to compete with any other teams in Oregon because they are not an official team. Based on these decisions made by PIL, the boys volleyball team at Cleveland are only allowed to have open gyms for the boys. 

There will be a school board meeting open to the public at 6 p.m. at the Prophet Center on Oct. 28. Volleyball players will be attending and some plan to speak to bring the issue to the attention of the school board and make a change, not only for this meeting, but future ones as well. Everyone who cares to keep boys volleyball at Cleveland needs to spread awareness and act now. 

The team is relying on anyone who can help to put in an effort to save their team. Posts on Instagram from the official account @pdx.chs.bvb and the official account for Oregon high school boys volleyball, @oregonboysvball, will raise awareness about how impactful volleyball is and how people can help save volleyball in the PIL. By simply posting about this matter or showing up to the next school board meeting, anyone can help bring this issue to light and fight to allow boys volleyball in PIL to play this year. 

“I just want to play and if any of you can do anything, that would be awesome,” Coracci said in hopes that his team will be saved.