Boys volleyball set to become an MSHSL sport in 2025
A new activity for Forest Lake Area High School has risen just in time for the 2024 spring sports season: boys volleyball.
Once only considered as a high school “club” team under head coach Butch Bethke, the squad has been around since 2019 – and has since then been pushing to make boys volleyball an officially sanctioned high school sport with the Minnesota State High School League.
Flash forward five years later to now, after the MSHSL approved the sport to begin in 2025. But this year, the team is playing on two different courts.
“It’s actually very difficult, because it’s not completely transitioned yet,” said head coach Deb Bakke, who’s also the Rangers girls team head JV coach. “There’s a lot of crossovers still where the boys who are coming in, they still have to be a part of the JVA association.”
As the process goes on, the boys squad is under the clubs’ Junior Volleyball Association association and the MSHSL before the team can make its full transition to a varsity sport via the MSHSL in the spring of 2025. The JVA has essentially overseen Forest Lake’s club team, as well as many others in the area over the years prior to those certain schools making the full transition into a varsity sport.
“They have to sign insurance waivers and be a member of that program, and they also have to be under the high school league rules. So, this year, it’s an overlap type of year. A lot of the different rules that apply to each one, we have to implement them ourselves, both on the JVA side and in the MSHSL. There’s still a lot of crossovers going on. It’s a lot more paperwork for the boys this year to even be able to participate. But leading into next year, it will be completely a high school sport, which will be really nice,” Bakke said.
Bakke led the JV2 team a season ago, the club’s junior varsity team that mostly consisted of eighth and ninth graders – which she states was more of a developmental and skill building type of program. When Rangers girls volleyball head coach Sherri Alm suggested the 15-year coaching veteran help build the boys team, Bakke jumped at the chance.
“I said absolutely,” she said. As the JV head coach for the girls team, she said “having that little bit of crossover, it helps, and I was ready to take on a new role and step up to the plate.
“I want to see the boys succeed, so I was very interested. It’s definitely different coaching boys than it is girls, so for me, last year was a big learning curve on that end. But I think I understand their mentality and how I can push them to strive and grow. You can’t approach the boys and coach them the same as you would the girls,” Bakke said.
Changes
“The biggest thing would be the logistics of score keeping, just in terms of how we’ll do it and the type of paperwork for the scoring system that we are using,” Bakke said. The teams will actually have officials for the playoffs and tournaments instead of having a coach be an official, as well.
“It’s hard, because there’s some overlap, and then there’s not in a sense. The substitutions will change, because there’s more subs in high school than there are in the JVA,” Bakke said, noting the upped 15 substitutions compared to the JVA’s 13. “There are also certain MSHSL league rules that will be enforced that are a bit more lenient than they are in the club league, so the skills of the boys will have to improve greatly in order to compete at the high school level.”
Preparing to weather the storm of a unique year, the athletes look to finish off one last season before finally being labeled as a varsity sport under the MSHSL system.
“I think [the players] like the switch,” Bakke said. “It’s going to actually lead to more of a conference that they’re playing against, so then they’ll have competition where we can get those rivalries established against certain schools and things of that nature, but it also means that they’ll have playoffs. This year, they will have some type of playoff, but they only take the top six or eight teams I think. It gives the guys a little bit more of a goal to work for, which is nice, compared to just having competition.”
Bakke says that the team will be crossing over to a number of different conferences throughout the course of the season and will see a variety of the same schools and conferences that other current Forest Lake varsity sports get to compete against.
“We will get to see Stillwater, and most of the same schools they square off with, depending on if they have a boys [volleyball] team or not.”
Fighting through this final season being stuck between leagues before becoming an official MSHSL sport, the boys will take this year’s opportunity to prepare themselves for the changes next season will bring.
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