Sports at Lambert are usually under the umbrella of GHSA (Georgia Highschool Sports Association) and teams outside of that are very hard to just organize, much less be successful. However, the Boy’s Volleyball Club here at Lambert has excelled despite the less than ideal circumstances that boys volleyball faces as a high school sport.

Club president and founder, senior, Dylan Taningco, has put countless hours into the club over the past year since he founded it at the beginning of his junior year. He has clearly put in an incredible amount of effort to be able to see the tea, grow as much as it has.

“We had to work as just a student-officer team to reach out and find coaches, find gym time, find practice time, even find somewhere to compete,” Taningco explained.

The team has clearly come a long way, after all, Taningco and his friends started building the foundation for a boys volleyball team only last year and they have made significant progress. Over the year that the team has been practicing together, they have formed a strong bond from their grassroots start and are now a formidable team in the state.

“I remember at the beginning of everything, it was fun; the camaraderie that was being built but then as soon as we started getting serious it was appreciating the fact that you could see everyone still had that sense of camaraderie but there was a good serious shift in perspective,” Taningco elaborated.

He explained that the team’s growth has been extremely fast because of that sense of camaraderie and the shift in perspective has turned that all into motivation to help the team grow and get better at an astonishing pace.

Senior Nik Dunna, an officer for the team since it was started last year, feels that the team has grown quite capable and may be able to turn their 7th place finish in state last year into a possible top 3 or even state championship.

“It’s also a sport that a lot of us just started playing, or were only playing for maybe a year or two, so it took a lot of work on the court and in the gym to get our team up to par with the other teams in the state and now we are looking at being a pretty big powerhouse this year,” Dunna explained.

He also talked about his feelings concerning boy volleyball’s place as a sport in the state, because the sport is less prominent in the south it is unable to be labeled as a GHSA sanctioned sport yet. This has been a big hurdle for the team and the officers because it puts their group on the bottom of the list for things like gym time and space. 

Both Taningco and Dunna felt that this is likely to change in the near future because a big requirement for a sport to be GHSA sanctioned is having at least 32 teams, and this year there are already more than 25 teams that have been made and are participating in the state championship. 

“We just need more schools,” Taningco said. “We just need more schools to say, we are going to start a volleyball club/team and we are going to join in a GHSA sport.”

Despite the struggles the team has faced in becoming a recognized sport in the state, they also have achieved the goal that most high school sports should have on top of their numerical achievements.

“We kind of found the sport randomly over quarantine,” Dunna said. “We just fell in love with it, just how much fun you can have with your friends because it is so teamwork dependent. So as long as you and your friends can have that bond it is just so much fun. Even in the bad moments, you are still together.”

The team has grown a lot since they started and are just beginning their second season, so make sure to show up and support them on their journey!