Students at Indiana Wesleyan have started the process of adding a men’s club volleyball team.
Freshman Andrew Zehr came up with the idea and has been an integral part of getting it off the ground.
“I wanted to do this in my high school and I tried for probably about a year,” Zehr said. “We had a couple of meetings about it, but we never actually started anything…I just want to be able to play competitive volleyball, so I reached out to Deane Webb.”
With Webb’s help, Zehr was able to get in touch with the Student Government Association and started writing a formal constitution to get the team approved.
“We have to go to the Student Life Council next Monday, and then we’re official,” Zehr said. “But right now since it’s almost the end of the year, we’re just working on practicing and getting guys ready to play and then next year we’ll start finding teams to play and working on playing tournaments.”
Webb, the athletic director at Indiana Wesleyan, coached volleyball for 24 years and saw the opportunity as a way to give back as someone did for him when he was in college.
“I got to college and found a bunch of people that enjoyed playing and we decided we wanted to form (a club volleyball team) and so in our case, there was someone that gave their time,” Webb said. “But it started with someone saying, ‘I’ll just give you some time.’”
For about one hour each week, Webb helps train the group of 12-14 students.
Webb said he enjoys the opportunity to pay it forward and see the group of guys improve.
Different schools have different processes when trying to form club sports teams. At IWU, the model has always been to go through SGA, but that may be changing for some club teams in the coming years.
“We’re trying to change the model a little bit,” Webb said. “And so we started with club softball. We’re launching some others for this coming fall, that will be much more formalized. There’s a grad assistant coach who will actually coach the team. We will go out and recruit people, which will help drive enrollment for Indiana Wesleyan.”
However, the club volleyball team will still go through SGA and be student-run.
“This is not that (model), this is strictly through SGA and is totally student-run,” Webb said. “It just gets confusing because the athletic director happens to be a volleyball guy. And so I’m helping, but it is something they are doing themselves and they’re doing a great job.”
Zehr said he’s been happy with the turnout so far and hopes this can turn into an official team in the future.
