For the 2025-2026 school year, FSS is considering adding a new sport: Volleyball! This news is exciting to lots of students, especially students looking to add a new sport, students who play volleyball outside of school, and students who already participate in the volleyball club during lunch periods. After interviewing Bill Klose, Director of Athletics, there’s new important information for students interested in joining the team during the fall athletic season next year. Bill answered many important questions about volleyball’s status in the Friends League and practice spaces, and got all the information that would be important to consider when signing up for sports next year.
Will volleyball be popular?
Bill believes that volleyball will be a success through students who are looking to try a new sport, eighth graders moving up from middle school, and new students interested in volleyball.
“There are a lot of things we have to think about before we add a sport, like we’re gonna be a small school no matter what, so we don’t wanna have all of our strong student athletes spread out onto like six different options,” Bill said. “So, we don’t want to make field hockey, cross country, or tennis worse by adding volleyball, but by doing the interest survey, we found out that there’s probably about 13 or 14 who already said they’re interested.”
Will there be a Varsity and JV team?
Probably. The sport would be smaller, with around 12-15 members, so there would be fewer opportunities for two levels of play. Once volleyball has been running for multiple years, there will be a larger team. Though there will be two teams for different levels, there will need to be a way to control the team size, since, realistically, in volleyball, each team could only be around 13 people. To control the size of the team, Bill said, “We’ll have to do an evaluation to see who is varsity and who’s JV. But because it’s gonna be a new sport, I think that the coaches will want to make that a longer time period, just give people time to get good at the sport.” Regardless, the coaches will try to stay inclusive since Friends Select tries to stay away from cutting players.
Will people quit their other sports teams to play volleyball?
When creating a new team, Bill said that a priority is to make sure that it doesn’t take away from other sports. “That was one of the questions in the survey to make sure, and it looks like all of the field hockey players who are interested in volleyball are still gonna play field hockey, some of the tennis players who will switch into volleyball, which is perfect.” Most students who expressed interest were not already playing a fall sport, since most people like to stick with sports they enjoy doing. While making sure that other teams don’t lose players, adding another option to the fall sports choices can eliminate the issue of overcrowding in the tennis team by adding new students to volleyball.
What will the volleyball uniforms look like?
The volleyball uniforms are undecided at the moment. Bill said that there has been no formal design or design idea yet, because he is waiting on input from the players on what they would like the design to be. There will be an opportunity for player input and opinions to ensure that everyone is as comfortable and happy as possible.
Will volleyball be added to the list of Friends League sports?
Once Friends Select makes volleyball an official sport, it will join the four other schools with volleyball teams and become a Friends League sport, with George School, Friends’ Central, Shipley, and the Academy of the New Church. The league has been asking for another school to join, so this presented us with the perfect opportunity to add volleyball as an official sport.
From the interest forms Bill sent out, it looks like we’re going to have a varsity volleyball team for the 2025-2026 school year. If the necessary adjustments are made over the summer, the volleyball team can start playing games in the fall of 2025.
