Junior joins boys volleyball team
By Alice Lamb
Junior Austin Remster decided to join an all-boys volleyball team at Dordt University.
It all started when Austin started watching volleyball, then he started going to different Volleyball camps and he fell in love with it. Boys volleyball has been seeing an uprise, with it seeing a growth of up to 76% in the recent years.
Austin explained he fell in love with the sport “about a year ago, I got very interested, but I have always been interested in it.” He said that he practiced with his mother and his sister and by going to clinics and practicing at home. His favorite thing about it is how he's been getting better and getting a block.
He found out about the camp he was going to through Dordt University's Instagram when he saw that he could go and sign up for it.
Austin believes that his biggest strengths so far are blocking, setting, digging, and serving while out on the court. The hardest thing for him is the lack of boys volleyball teams in Iowa and how expensive it is to play competitively.
When asked about how it's been playing with older boys, he added “I have learned and adapted to their pace of game.” He explained he has made lots of friends so far, and not all from Iowa.
His mother, Melissa Remster, has been helping along with his journey into boys volleyball and finding a team to play with.
She talked about the difficulty of finding the different volleyball camps for Austin to play at. Most colleges only have co-ed volleyball instead of just a boys team. There are currently only 11 official men’s college volleyball programs in Iowa.
The advice she gave for people looking for camps was, “Just go online and look for the camps that best suit you.”
Overall, Austin’s experiences have been positive, both with his teammates and other social interactions he has had. He acknowledged the difficulty to find a boys volleyball team and the travel he has had to do to get there.