The Boys Volleyball Club operates with over 30 committed members, but that leaves many wondering: Why don’t they have an official team? The answer is more complex than it seems; it’s a time consuming process involving many moving factors.

Most teams start off as a booster club, a platform used to highlight participation and raise funds. The girls volleyball coach Patricia Manhart has been with the girls team ever since its transition from a club to an official team in 2013.

“The Board of Education said that the girls had to start as a [club] program to show and ... prove that there was interest,” said Manhart. “When I was first hired, I heard from the athletic director at the time that there was interest.”

At the beginning of the club’s creation, players were requested to pay a certain fee to cover the costs of transportation, uniforms and equipment. After the club demonstrated sufficient participation, the Board of Education began covering the team’s costs over the course of three years: a lengthy step by step integration of the club into the athletic program.

Athletics take up a significant portion of the high school’s budget, with nearly $1.7 million spent on school-sponsored athletic instruction from 2023 2024 to support 30 teams. The influence of booster clubs is significant, as they help signal to the Board of Education whether a team merits allocation in the budget. As the principal of Princeton High School, Cecilia Birge oversees all facets of the budget for the high school alone.

“It’s the principal who makes the recommendation to the superintendent. The superintendent has the final say, then she presents it to the school board. The school board votes for the total school budget,” Birge said.

As one of the founding members of the PHS Boys Volleyball Club, Kaden Li ’26 has worked for the past two years trying to get an official team approved. The club has accumulated new members each year, showcasing a rising interest for the sport in PHS.

“We got in contact with Mr. Dzbenski, the sports director. I think it’s been a funding issue,” said Li. “It seems like there’s a good amount of people who are interested, have the participation, but can’t get the funding.”

While funding has long posed challenges for athletics, it’s far from the only obstacle standing in the way. Title IX, a congressional law passed in 1972, prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school, ensuring an equal number of boys and girls sports teams. Almost every sport at this school has both a girls and boys team, except for football and field hockey. Brian Dzbenski, the athletics director for Princeton Public Schools, compares the system to a series of checks and balances, explaining that whenever a boys team is added, a girls team must also be added in order to maintain balance.

“If we do create a [boys] volleyball team, we’re going to have that imbalance ... we have to do an assessment of all our sports and look at the enrollment numbers,” said Dzbenski. “We have to take a look and possibly add another girls team.”

Not only does the athletic program have to take into account the balance between teams, but they also need to weigh the financial burden of this rule, which requires covering the costs of equipment, coaches, and referees for two teams rather than just one. Adding two teams places a considerable strain on the budget, leading to a shift in funding allocation.

“The district allocates a certain amount of funding to fund coaches to coach those teams. When you take a look at the breakdown, all the girls programs and all the boys programs we have, we have an equal number of employee coaches for female sports as we do for male sports,” said Dzbenski. “The financial stressor is placed on the district for adding ... another two coaches’ salaries.”

Additionally, the costs associated with equipment, transportation, and referees present significant challenges that the district might struggle to manage. Given the high school’s limited budget, adding another team would likely create enough financial strain that could impact academics. Funding the new teams would require a budget reshuffle, pulling resources from other areas - a process involving the entire high school.

“Every academic area has to balance things, so that’s where it becomes a daunting task of competing priorities, because we have so many deserving students on so many programs,” Dzbenski said.

Unless the circumstances allow it right away, the creation of an official boys volleyball team will likely take a long time to become part of the PHS athletic program. However, with the recent progress of the Boys Volleyball Club and the growing attention the sport has garnered, the prospect of establishing an official boys’ team at PHS is increasingly within reach.