The Missouri State High School Activities Association has announced boys volleyball as an interscholastic sport for the 2023-24 spring season. The announcement, which was made via the organization’s social media platforms, came after a more than two decade long wait in which, during this time, the sport fell under the category of “emerging sports.”

“When a school votes a sport in, it becomes an emerging sport,” MSHSAA Associate Executive Director Stacy Schroeder said. “It sits there until at least 50 schools have voted on it for two years.”

Boys volleyball has sat in this category for the past 25 years, holding an amount of votes just short of the 50 school requirement.

“There were about 45 schools for the bulk of its history,” Schroeder added. “Just here, in the last couple of years, has the interest and the registration numbers grown enough to hit those marks to automatically be offered to members.”

Although boys volleyball has been inducted by MSHSAA as an official sport, an additional step is required of the Wentzville School District in order to establish teams within the schools. According to MSHSAA, in order to register for the upcoming boys volleyball season, school administrators were required to login to their membership portal where they would be given the opportunity to sign up for either the 2023-24 or 2024-25 seasons.

Several students, including sophomore Patrick Kesler, expressed their interest in joining the prospective boys volleyball team.

“A lot of the current sports here don’t really fit what I like to do,” Kesler said. “So I was pretty excited to hear the news.”

At this time, Liberty is not registered for either season, meaning that students like Kesler will likely not be able to play on a Liberty boys volleyball team for at least the next two years.