Throughout the school year, students and volleyball enthusiasts anxiously waited for the volleyball club to announce open gym dates. As the school year commenced, the number of open gyms started to diminish. Officers desperately tried to maintain regular open gym times, but their attempts failed each time due to various reasons. Sometimes it was other clubs, sometimes it was other sporting events — even the teacher dodgeball games conflicted with the club’s schedule. Despite the setback, the officers are optimistic about what the following year has to bring, and what the new officers will do in order to bring back the open gyms.

According to junior Cameron Vong, the club expects to host more regular open gyms in the year to come. As one of the new presidents, he believes that it is important that the club is recognized and people develop interest in it.

“Next semester [we] should have more free time in the beginning of the year, so we could have more open gyms and other events,” said Vong.

Due to re-construction of the main gym, other clubs and sporting events took priority in the field house, thus diminishing the chances of a open gym for the volleyball club. Junior Phoebe Li explains the repercussions of having only one facility to play in.

“It was around like March or April, and we were trying to get more time but that was the time when the gym started going under construction,” Li said. “So it was just a lot of things that were out of our control.”

Vong also believes that members and attendees can vary based on skill level. Vong was impressed by the fascination that underclassmen have for the sport. Some attendees do not even play volleyball on a team, but their sheer interest in the sport brought them to the open gyms.

“This year it was mostly just word of mouth,” Vong said. “We have a very active underclassmen body and so they talk about it with their friends and they all [showed] up. So as long as you spread the word out just through word of mouth and club promotion day we typically get good turnouts for that.”

A popular way for MVHS clubs to gain recognition is through club food days. Li believes that this was an integral part in recruiting new members to the club. However, all of this is possible only if they become more proactive throughout the year.

“Well, we’re definitely going to try to be more proactive to get ahead of badminton club,” Li said. “I don’t know about the gym is gonna be under construction for a semester. So that might pose a problem with like all the clubs wanting to get time in the gyms, but we’re definitely going to try to do more second semester.”

With current club president Kelly Chen graduating in just a week, she believes that the club has grown a lot throughout the years and is proud to be a part of it. For Chen, a successful year was getting to enjoy volleyball with her friends and creating an environment where everybody in the club could interact with each other and have a great time.

“And while we actually had a lot more people than anticipated this year, we had around like for the open gyms that we did hold there were probably around it’s to a people that turned up surprising, but a lot of them were on teams or anticipating to join the team,” Chen said.

Li noted that mostly people who play volleyball attend the open gyms, mainly because they have more interest. She also added that the club provided different courts, where people of various skill level can play leisurely or competitively.

“I would say mostly people who know how to play volleyball because there are the people that are most interested in playing. But they’re also definitely people on this side are just passing around and having fun too,” Li said.