After a year off, Extreme Volleyball returns as an event during Mini-Victorthon. This event includes creating a volleyball team with all boys and elected girls coaches run practices and prepares them for the main event. But participation at Extreme Volleyball was lower than other events here at CHS, along with some teams faced challenges with practices and new coaching dynamics. Thus, sophomore Event Committee Member sophomore Landry Cook and sophomore Coach Eden Bourland reflect on this year’s event and visualize possible ideas for the future of Extreme Volleyball.

“Participation for Extreme Volleyball was definitely lower than Bulldog Bowl, because Bulldog Bowl has been going on for so long and everyone knows about it,” Cook said. “But for Extreme Volleyball, if we continue to build it up and build excitement around it and communication around it, we can definitely get a lot more numbers next year.”

New to this year for Bulldog Bowl at halftime, Independence Hall students got the opportunity to play their own game of football. Cook suggests something similar that could increase the number of spectators and participants coming to Extreme Volleyball.

“We can get our community more involved and have more spectators. [Like]tting middle schoolers to come watch or Independence Hall,” Cook said. “For Bulldog Bowl, we could have a halftime, or before-the-game thing with Independence Hall. Just get more inclusion and more people.”

Extreme Volleyball brought plenty of excitement and unexpected outcomes. Each team had limited times for practices, so players on the team had to adapt quickly to the sport, which was unfamiliar to most of them. This year, the sophomores upset the seniors, surprising many since upperclassmen usually dominate in all class events.

“They performed really well, especially for the whole team only coming to one practice,” Bourland said. “I think that they didn't get down on themselves when they were making mistakes and they just kept playing.”

Even with the success comes some potential improvements for the future. Throughout the event, Bourland’s first idea of the players’ commitment to the team and mindsets ended up drastically shifting.

“The guys took it a lot less seriously. [Volleyball is] mainly a girl-dominated sport, and they went in thinking ‘this is going to be easy, I can do it without having to go to practice,’” Bourland said. ”But then the four players on my team the first day were like, ‘wow, this is actually hard.’”

Thanks to this event, Extreme Volleyball played a key role in raising money for this years cause during MiniVictorthon, helping solidify the future of this event annually.

“It was a success because we raised over $3,000 for Mott’s Children's Hospital, which is awesome,” Cook said. “The players that I talked to after [said] they had a lot of fun, and they really enjoyed the event and getting to play.”