As he clenches his fists, Josh Hart hits the ball and propels it deep into the stands, which is followed by tremendous boos from the crowd.

As an English teacher, Hart has been able to avoid another embarrassing encounter with volleyball. But now, he is planning on sponsoring a club entirely about playing volleyball.

“Strictly off the record,” Hart said, “Volleyball is not a real sport and I hate it.”

The reason Hart has such disdain for the sport is because of traumatic experiences in the past.

“I was terrible at it in 9th grade gym class,” Hart said. “Volleyball is the one sport I could think of where it is easy to single out that bad person over and over and over again.”

The opportunity to sponsor the upcoming volleyball club came to the teacher when junior Matteo Kalusha-Aguirre approached him with the idea.

“When I was a freshman, I looked around and saw that there were no volleyball clubs,” Kalusha-Aguirre said. “Because there’s no volleyball team for guys either, I said ‘we should start a club’. I never did it but this year Hart showed up, he seemed pretty chill, and he wasn’t sponsoring any clubs yet, so it seemed like a good idea.”

Kalusha-Aguirre is still a newbie to volleyball so he hopes Hart doesn’t let his bad experiences in the past affect the club.

“He’s had a past childhood trauma,” Kalusha-Aguirre said. “I’m hoping that he’ll either be able to take that out on us, or get over it some other way.”

Hart said he decided to take up the challenge of sponsoring volleyball club to, “overcome my feelings towards volleyball and help others have fun with the great sport that I’ve heard it is.”

Hart added that the purpose of the club was, “not to be super competitive, but embrace teamwork and fitness.”

Although the club has not yet had its first official meeting, Kalusha-Aguirre has almost twenty interested members and says they are excited to start the season.

“It’s gonna be lit.”