Youth volleyball player finds way onto the court

Hayden Weber of Conway started playing volleyball as a fourth-grader while watching his older sister, Hailey, who started playing in seventh grade. Weber’s love of the sport has grown despite it not being a sanctioned sport for boys by the Arkansas Activities Association.
Hayden Weber of Conway started playing volleyball as a fourth-grader while watching his older sister, Hailey, who started playing in seventh grade. Weber’s love of the sport has grown despite it not being a sanctioned sport for boys by the Arkansas Activities Association.

Hayden Weber of Conway found the sport he loved, but he’s had to work hard to find a way to play it.

Weber, 13, an eighth-grader at Bob and Betty Courtway Middle School, aspires to play college volleyball, but Arkansas high schools offer the sport exclusively to girls. According to www.statista.com, more than 400,000 high school girls participate in the sport, while numbers for boys are about 55,000.

But Weber has found a way.

“He was brave enough to jump out on the limb and play volleyball with us,” said Angela Walls, director of the Conway Juniors Volleyball Club, a Junior Olympic program that is part of USA Vollleyball’s Delta Region. “He watched his [older] sister, Hailey, play and wanted to try his hand since he had tried numerous other sports, but nothing caught his interest like volleyball.”

Hailey Weber started playing volleyball in the seventh grade; Hayden was a fourth-grader.

Their mother, Shannon Weber, said Hayden tagged along with the family to practices and tournaments from the beginning.

“When she was playing or practicing, he’d go off with a ball any chance he’d get,” Shannon Weber said. “He’d get another girl to hit with him off to the side, and he liked it so much that the coach would let him join in some in practice, and that started fueling the fire.”

Hayden has tried other sports — football, basketball, baseball and wrestling, among others — but discovered his passion with volleyball.

“I never really was good at basketball, but when I first played volleyball, I loved it instantly,” he said. “I don’t really want to brag, but when I was in sixth grade, we went against a team, and I served [the complete set], 25-0.”

He played for the Conway Juniors as the team’s only boy for two years before aging out. Delta Region rules allow male participation on girls teams through age 13. At 12, he made the roster for the Delta Region High Performance Camp.

“He was the first boy to ever make it,” Shannon Weber, said, adding that only 72 players

ages 12 to 17 made the high-

performance roster. According to deltavolleyball.net, 350 athletes tried out in 2016.

Walls called it “the cream-of-the-crop camp.”

“College coaches come and train and work with the players who are selected,” she said. “A majority of the kids who attend the HP camp receive college scholarships.”

Because Hayden couldn’t play for his school team at Courtway last year, he served as manager for Cheryl Bing, a former assistant volleyball coach at Conway High School and former head coach at North Little Rock who is now the head coach at Courtway.

“He was able to get out and run through some drills with us,” Bing said. “As a manager, he was able to still be around it and get out there.”

She said he was the inspiration for her to start a boys volleyball club at school.

“When he was a fifth-grader, he would bug me to get the ball out every chance he could,” Bing said. “I had 30 boys sign up. Half of them weren’t serious about it, but the other half actually wanted to play again.

“For his age, Hayden is pretty good. He just eats, sleeps and drinks volleyball, and he has from the time I’ve known him. He wasn’t interested in watching Hailey; he wanted to find a court and play himself. Any kind of hard surface, he was constantly trying to pass, hit on the wall, trying to round up kids to play with him every chance he could get.”

Hayden said he practiced every day in his room.

“I pretend I’m in an imaginary game,” he said. “I use a smaller ball, just play against my wall. If I use a bigger ball, I’ll break stuff.

“I’ve broken lots of stuff.”

In 2016, Hayden played his final season with the Conway Juniors, after which he was asked to play with a boys team from the Dallas area —

MadFrog Volleyball Club, which plays in USA Volleyball’s North Texas Region.

“We thought maybe he could practice somewhere around here and we could pick up tournaments with them,” Shannon

Weber said. “They called me right back and talked to me for almost an hour and invited Hayden to come and play with the team at the boys junior national championship. They wanted him to play up on a 14-and-under team. We drove to Dallas three weekends in a row for him to practice and meet and learn his team; then we went down there [for the tournament], and [he] played teams from Puerto Rico, Hawaii and California.

“It was the most cool experience for him ever to be with those boys.”

She said he was the only MadFrog who never rotated out during the tournament.

“He got to play all the way around,” she said.

Hayden said he has already seen differences in playing with girls and boys.

“Whenever you mess up, girls are like, ‘It’s OK; it’s OK,’” he said. “But with guys, when someone messes up, they blame each other.”

He’ll be a manager for Conway Junior High School this fall, which will keep him involved with the game he loves and help keep his skills sharp.

“I still get to practice with them some, toss balls for them,” he said. “And I teach them how to jump serve, and the coach has me serve to them.”

Shannon Weber said Hayden was further along at his age than Hailey, now a junior on Laura Crowe’s Lady Cat team, had been.

“He can definitely hang with her and a lot of the high school girls,” Shannon Weber said. “He’s not afraid to practice with older kids — college kids, the high school team. Last year my daughter’s competitive 16-year-old team had 11 players and needed a 12th, so her coach asked Hayden to come each time so they’d have enough to scrimmage.”

Hailey Weber said she is proud of the way her brother has grown as a player.

“He is a hard worker who loves the game,” she said. “He pushes himself every day to get better and strives to be the best he can be.”

Walls said Hayden is “very, very good.”

“If it falls the way I’d love for it to fall for him, he’ll play college volleyball,” she said.

Before that, though, a number of people are hoping Hayden can find a club team closer to home.

“It’s a shame there are no teams for him to play on around here,” Bing said. “Six to eight would be an ideal number, but if you had a big enough response for two teams, that would be awesome.”

Walls said the Conway Juniors organization is reaching out to other clubs in central Arkansas to see if there are enough boys interested in forming a team.

“We’re just now starting to spread the word,” she said.

Shannon Weber said that while the family is considering a return to the MadFrogs, they would prefer a local team.

She and her husband, Brian, had originally struggled a bit with the decision to let their son join the Conway Juniors team as its only male player.

“We worried about some of the kids making fun of him and how that would go over,” she said. “We prayed about it, and we decided we couldn’t and shouldn’t keep him from at least trying. He wanted to do it, and even to this day, no one has made fun of him. All the guys are supportive of him, and the girls are all very welcoming.

“It has been a blessing, and I’m so glad we let him step out of the box and try something other kids might be afraid to try.”

The Conway Juniors program is looking for coaches with volleyball experience. Player tryouts will begin in late October or early November. For more information, contact Walls at angela.walls@conwaycorp.net.

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