On a Wednesday night in 2018, Aaron Smaka saw an article on Fox 17 about a boys volleyball program being started in West Michigan. He noticed that the effort was being led by a friend of his, Jason Heerema, the Athletic Director at Grand Rapids Christian. And Smaka, being a volleyball enthusiast and head coach of the girls team at GHHS, was obviously interested.
That night, Heerema’s phone rang.
“How many teams have you got?” asked Smaka.
“We’ve got three, can you play by next week Thursday?” Heerema replied.
So the next day, Smaka started advertising to the school and by Friday, he had 30 people in the gym for practice. The team came in everyday Sunday through Wednesday to practice for their first game.
From there, the sport continued to be incredibly successful, and eventually, even a JV team was created.
Some of the success is undeniably due to coaching and raw player talent, which has gotten Grand Haven to the state finals three years in a row.
And this year, many of the players are hungry for the state title taken by Hudsonville the last two years.
“(The team is) excited to play Hudsonville and get our revenge,” freshman Max Krugler said.
But a larger part of the success can be attributed to the soft learning curve, especially in Grand Haven, where there are pickup tournaments every weekend in the summer, and public nets that are up all summer in the state park.
“It’s a matter of getting three friends, going down to the beach, and playing,” said Smaka.
Another benefit of having a gentle learning curve is the ability to get good, fast.
“Even juniors and seniors can learn to play,” Smaka said.
Additionally, the program has been graduating star players who would continue with the sport beyond high school.
“We’ve graduated six or seven guys who have gone on to play college volleyball,” said Smaka.
As the Grand Haven team grew, so did the rest. The measly four teams from the first year numbered almost 50 by the end of the 2023 season, prompting the creation of a second division.
But despite the immense growth shown both at the school and state levels, boys volleyball is not officially a sport at GHHS, and it is also not sponsored by the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
So, this year, with the help of several other coaches from various districts, Smaka put in a formal application to the MHSAA board. The decision came on May 6, the MHSAA would be officially adding boys volleyball to their list of sponsored tournament sports. This was the first new sport to be sponsored since the addition of boys and girls lacrosse in the 2004-05 school year.