It’s set five of five, the first team to 15 wins the game. The Red Dogs, a combined team of West Albany High School, South Albany High School, and Santiam Christian, are ahead by six points. South Salem High School, their opponent, starts to score point by point until they are tied and eventually pull ahead. The Red Dog fans in the stands are at the edge of their seats waiting for them to get back the lead that they had. 

     South Salem is at 12, then 13, and The Red Dogs get back the ball. They serve the ball into the net. South Salem gets the ball back. Fourteen points to 11, and South Salem wins the next point, winning the set and the game. After the game, I went up to my dad Geoffrey Berg, the assistant coach, and told him it was a good game. 

   This year’s boys volleyball was not a sport offered through WAHS. It is, however, offered through SAHS, where a team of West and South Albany kids combined with one boy from Santiam Christian to form a team. This combined team was created after my mom, Kaye Berg, called SAHS in the hopes that they would have a team since WAHS was not offering one. SAHS was happy to host this combined team and The Red Dogs were created.

     This team is an amazing start to bringing boys volleyball to Albany, but it could be better. WAHS should have its own team next year. The main concerns of having this sport is that it would take away from other sports that go on during this time and there wouldn’t be enough boys interested. However, this would not be the case. There is a want for this sport at WAHS with 15 boys trying out for the team and eight getting on the team. Not only is there a good amount of WAHS boys on the team, but out of all of the West Albany boys on the team, roughly half are part of another sports team on campus. This sounds like a big number, however it tracks with the state numbers, with 47% of boys doing boys volleyball also playing another sport.

     This solves both of the problems that were a barrier to WAHS having its own team, making it a logical decision to add boys volleyball to its lists of sports next year. Not only does it provide a healthy environment for boys to grow in a new sport, it is a learning experience of working together on a team.