Every year when April turns to May, the Bowie girls volleyball team has a special event unique to Bowie. While many sports are ending they suit up again for this competitive tournament; the boy’s volleyball tournament.
This tournament is a longstanding tradition for the volleyball team, and senior Natalie Erickson is already a seasoned veteran when it comes to the tournament.
“When I came in as a freshman, former head coach, Coach Sines had already been here for years and was doing the boys tournament to advertise boys playing volleyball,” Erickson said.
The tournament is set up in a bracket style form, with girls from the varsity volleyball team acting as coaches and picking the players for their team. One of Natalie’s players, senior Lucas Burcham, explained the rules.
“Each member of the volleyball girls volleyball team creates their own team, and acts as a head coach picking ten players to be on the team,” Burcham said. “Then the teams play each other in a single elimination tournament.”
Many of the players are new to volleyball entirely, however most play other sports like football or soccer which helps with volleyball.
“I’ve always been semi-athletic, and that I can adapt and play most sports,” Burcham said. “I don’t think my volleyball skills are going to be so bad where I’ll be a liability.”
Current Bowie coach Danna Wincher, like Sines, is a big advocate for boy’s volleyball as a sport, and putting this tournament on brings more popularity to the sport and hopefully could lead to a team in the future.
“I want the guys here to know that we support them,” Wincher said. “We want to think it’s awesome that Bowie is able to expand with all genders playing and hopefully one day we can field a team for a season.”
Seeing as the tournament is just for fun, the volleyball team always tries to come up with creative and funny team names. Erickson and her team put a lot of thought into the name making sure it was able to be funny but also witty.
“Our team’s name right now is ‘Senior Swingers’ because in volleyball you swing,” Erickson said. “I’m pretty impressed to be honest by the creativeness and I think it’s one of the better ones I’ve heard of since I joined the program.”
While Erickson revealed her team’s name, the girls usually keep it secret from their coach in order to make it a surprise when they reveal them.
“The girls are being really secretive right now,” Wincher said. “So, I asked them today to go ahead and share with me because I have to approve it before we actually publicize it but I’m excited to hear the names.”
Burcham isn’t short on confidence going into the tournament as he has been working hard and believes he can lead his team to victory.
“I’ve been going to the courts every day and doing 100 serves,100 spikes, 100 sets, and 100 kills,” Burcham said. “I’m gonna work my tail off and I’m gonna leave it all out on that court when it’s game time.”
Erickson also believes in the team and thinks that expectations are high for her squad.
“I think we got some good confidence and we’ll do well and go far,” Erickson said.
