Libby Harness had been looking for opportunities.
Her teenage son, Shawn, wasn't interested in the sports teams offered at Normal Community West High School, but he was interested in playing volleyball.
Until recently, the options were limited.
"We had been looking all over just to find a place and we would have to drive 2 1/2 hours each way," she said. "To have one here in town, now, is just great."
The club Harness is referring to is Normal Flight Volleyball Club. It opened its doors to families and players in late August with the goal of providing not only an additional place to play club volleyball, but a chance for boys to play on their own teams as well — something relatively rare in Central Illinois.
Founded by Bloomington High School graduate and multi-sport athlete Aimee Biles, the burgeoning club is the byproduct of what she joked was a millennial midlife crisis.
She'd returned to the area for a job after living in Virginia, Maryland and Texas; when the job turned out not to be a good fit, Biles said she began thinking about starting her own volleyball club.
Initially, she planned to only offer girls teams.
"I was starting my business plan, looking at the environment here and in that same week The Pantagraph posted an article about [someone's son] who drives all the way to Joliet to play competitive volleyball. And then I saw literally, like, 12 groups of boys peppering in random locations," she said in an interview for WGLT's Sound Ideas. "I was like, 'OK. That's it. We need to have a boys team here.'"
Tryouts for the club opened in late August. Ten kids showed up, Biles said, but their ages varied significantly, which wasn't conducive to building teams. Some players came from Peoria, Biles said, and others drove from Champaign. When forming teams didn't pan out, Biles said the club's business model pivoted accordingly.
"The community needs opportunities to explore that volleyball is even a thing. They need drop-ins. Parents have told me they need flexibility and I'm trying to adjust to that," she said. "The goal is just to keep it nice and simple until we have about 14 athletes coming — and then from there, we'll start breaking it down and growing it into different sessions."
In the meantime, Biles is offering drop-in clinics from 6-9 p.m. on Monday and Friday nights at the club's temporary location at Game Time Gym II. The first 90 minutes are reserved for boys to play with the net at men's height; the net is dropped to women's height after that, she said, but boys are still allowed to play if they choose.
"I have promised to protect this space and go with the mantra, 'If I build it, they will come,'" Biles said. "They're not here yet, but they will come."
Those drop-in clinics are how Harness finally found the opportunity for her son Shawn to casually play the sport.
"He comes out every time there's a clinic," she said. "It's the only way we've been able to do it."
There are no high school boys volleyball teams in the Central Illinois area, though an unofficial group has been playing at Normal Community West High School, and a Springfield-area volleyball club began offering a boys team a few years ago. That lack of opportunity to play the sport competitively is its own barrier: Biles said some who may be interested in the sport may not be able to play due to scheduling in other sports in which they can be on a team.
"Club season overlaps multiple sports. So that's a barrier right there: We, as a club, have to be flexible to those schedules and allow these athletes to pursue multiple passions," Biles said. "That's a huge, huge goal of mine: To create an environment where these kids can come in and explore their team aspect, their athleticism, without feeling all of the pressure and demand of, 'I've got to go D1 or bust.'"
Biles said the club's next move in the coming weeks is offering three-week mini volleyball camps for elementary and junior high students — a move aimed at building a pipeline of athletes to potentially join the club. Ideally, she said, that's something that would happen across the region.
"If we had Champaign and Peoria and maybe Decatur, we could have an affordable program for boys to compete locally. We wouldn't need to go to Chicago or St. Louis to play. We just need one in each spot," she said. "We'll get there."
