Founding a sport at a high school is never easy.

Butler has a coach on its staff who was in on the ground floor of two of them.

Lew Liparulo was a coach on Bill McClarnon’s staff when the Golden Tornado began its wrestling program in 1991. He stayed on when current Butler mat coach Scott Stoner took over the program in 1993.

Everything changed for Liparulo in 1994. Butler decided to start a boys volleyball program and he was named head coach. This weekend, with a tournament at Norwin, Liparulo begins his 25th season as the only head boys volleyball coach the school has known.

And there’s some significance to that.

Liparulo’s career record is 191 wins and 192 losses. With an optimistic outlook entering this season, there is a good chance his career mark will go over .500.

It’s taken a lot of years to get there.

“Those first few years were tough,” Liparulo recalled. “We won maybe three matches our first year. Then we had two or three years where we only had one or two wins.

“It’s tough to start any program out as a varsity team with no junior high program in place to help kids develop. We were eight or nine years in before we finally got a boys junior high volleyball program in place.”

Liparulo ran a sixth grade boys volleyball tournament in Butler for 27 years to help spark kids’ interest in the game.

He pointed out that boys can get started in other sports at age 5 or 6. Not so in volleyball.

Butler’s boys volleyball team has reached the WPIAL playoffs in 10 of the past 11 seasons.

“It’s taken a lot of work to get it to that point,” Liparulo said.

The idea to form a boys team came when a number of boys approached Liparulo — then Butler’s girls volleyball coach — with the desire to form a team of their own. While the school district mulled the idea over, four boys joined the girls team.

Liparulo couldn’t discriminate. He was told by the athletic director to put his best team on the court. Two of the boys didn’t want to play in a game because they would have been ineligible had Butler started a boys team in the spring.

The other two boys played for the girls team that fall.

The boys team was formed and the rest is history.

This year’s Butler boys volleyball team has 30 players, varsity and junior varsity. Some of the players also played football, baseball, soccer, participated in rifle, swimming or cheerleading.

Liparulo retired from teaching in 2015 after a 41-year career in the district. He has been involved in coaching at Butler since 1976.

He’s not giving it up yet.

“I’m in the ‘one year at a time’ stage now,” he said. “My enjoyment and desire to work with kids is still there.”

A plus-.500 record will soon join them.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle