On Mar. 1-2, the premier men's volleyball clubs of the Midwest met for a tournament in Iowa City. Up there with powerhouses Iowa and Nebraska were a dozen ragtag Grinnell students, half with no volleyball experience prior to this year.

Understandably, the team got beat up in the standings; but for this new group of volleyballers, their spirits were only heightened. "We got last place, but we were all happy with the weekend," player Aaron Swaney '11 said.

It was a lucky accident that spiked the men's club volleyball team into existence earlier this year. According to Jeff Kljaich '11, one of the team founders, "I ran into James Archer ('10) in the weight room during NSO and he had a volleyball shirt on." The two talked about starting a men's team, which Archer had attempted last year but was unable to grow involvment.

The idea lay dormant until they ended up on the same team for intramural volleyball; "We talked about it and talked about it ... a lot of the kids on my team are on the team," Kljaich said. After intramural season, the dozen or so men began practices two to three times weekly, preparing for their first tournament earlier last month.

An informal atmosphere keeps the team together, "We don't really have anybody in charge," Swaney said. The team is almost entirely composed of the first- and second-place teams from intramural league. Many of the players also play soccer, which limits the season to after the fall, although Kljaich said, "You can have tournaments every weekend from September to May."

Though they finished poorly at the Iowa City tournament, the team remains optimistic. "We lost all of our matches but won some of our games, which is better than we thought we would do," Swaney said. The team also hopes to host a tournament in Grinnell at the end of April.

Swaney and Kljaich agreed that having enough players has been their biggest struggle this year. "The girls (volleyball players) come to our practices to fill out the teams, twelve to fourteen people," Kljaich said. "We've developed a bond as teammates, but we'd also like to see new faces. It's open to the public basically."

Kljaich's lofty dream for the team is to develop a notoriety similar to Grinnell basketball. "If we ever have a definite season where we play one-on-one with teams on Thursday night, my dream is just to see the crowd roaring, like at basketball games. That's where we're trying to go with this," he said.