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Since the Oregon School Activities Association sanctioned boys volleyball as an official sport Oct. 6, some of the state’s largest school districts have said they will not participate in the sport’s inaugural OSAA season.
That includes the Portland Interscholastic League, which has offered its seven high school boys volleyball teams the option to continue as “club” teams for the upcoming season. But student-athletes and volleyball advocates continue to fight for Portland Public Schools to allow them to opt in with an OSAA designation, arguing that without it they will be limited in who they can compete against, and barred from the state tournament.
So far, the district has said that’s not financially feasible. (The latest cost estimate to offer boys volleyball across the district’s nine high schools is about $280,000 per year.) And at a Tuesday meeting of the Portland School Board, senior chief of operations Dr. Jon Franco said it would be impossible for club teams to opt in with an OSAA designation. An OSAA designation, Franco said, would mean the district would be responsible for financing. (The district faces a $50 million budget gap in the upcoming year. Franco says it anticipates cutting the PIL budget by about $400,000.)
PPS also says adding boys volleyball as an OSAA sport would create an imbalance between boys and girls athletics.
Volleyball advocates in the district have gone as far as to offer to fundraise for teams across the district. But Franco on Tuesday maintained that fundraising is not a reliable source of revenue and that it will be hard to predict exactly how much to fundraise for. (For example, while the district’s current estimates are for one team at each high school, if more kids want to participate, that could be three teams.)
“We don’t want to get into a place, this is actually a huge fear of mine, where we bring on a sport and then have to cut it in the following year,” Franco said.
Franco told board members the district is now exploring a way to build a boys volleyball season of its own that’s club-based, with participants from other districts that find themselves in a similar predicament. He said that includes schools with club teams at Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard-Tualatin, and North Clackamas school districts.
Boys volleyball advocates say decisions from school districts across Oregon who’ve chosen to opt out of the sports’ inaugural season reflect poor planning. In a letter to the School Board from advocates dated Dec. 8, they noted districts like Salem-Keizer put budgets in place to support the sport’s growth. Many boys volleyball supporters—including student athletes themselves—rallied at a Nov. 4 School Board meeting to get the district to partake in the sport.
Patrick Gibson, director of the Oregon High School Boys Volleyball Association, says PPS’s lack of foresight “dropped the ball on our kids” and taught “them that their advocacy does not matter.”
He says it’s admirable that the PIL is willing to shoulder the burden of organizing a season, and that he hopes the district will find success.
But he still has some concerns. “I can speak from experience that it is a lot of work [to organize a season and end of year tournament] and OSAA is much better prepared to manage seasons and large events than I was.”
