Gibault Catholic High School will field a boys volleyball team next year, the school announced last week.

The school’s girls volleyball coach, Heather Ebert, has offered to coach the team, which will begin play during the 2014-15 school year. Ebert led the Hawks to a state final four volleyball appearance in 2011.

The school announced that it may host a summer camp for the new sport. More details will be announced in the near future.

“We have had interest in starting a team for years, but not quite enough to commit to a team,” Gibault principal Russ Hart told the Republic-Times. “Boys volleyball is quite popular in our feeder schools now and that interest is being felt here at Gibault.”

Hart added that, as a smaller school, it must balance the number of sports offered with the number of athletes available to have viable programs.

Finding schools to play should not be a problem, Hart added. But finding schools similar in size to Gibault with boys volleyball may be difficult.

“We will have to travel quite a bit,” he said. “The schools in our immediate area have not offered volleyball in the past and I have not heard of the possibility at this time of adding the program.”

While several Missouri high schools offer the sport, only a handful of metro east schools field boys volleyball teams: Althoff, Metro East Lutheran, Belleville East, Belleville West, Edwardsville, Granite City and East St. Louis.