Why I dragged my 12-year-old to club volleyball (and why I only complain about it half the time)
Last winter, after her rec league volleyball season ended, my daughter Lila camped out on our living couch for three straight weeks. Cheddar Goldfish crumbs worked their way into the couch seams, she rewatched the same 15-second dance trends on TikTok until I could mouth the words along, and every time I asked her if she wanted to go to the park or ride bikes or do literally anything that didn’t involve blue light, she’d sigh so deep her whole shoulders moved and say “I’m bored.” I was tired of nagging, tired of stepping on crumbs, tired of hearing how bored she was. When my friend Sarah mentioned her kid did a low-key club volleyball program, and they were having an open gym for new players, I wrote the date on my calendar and told Lila we were going. No discussion, just “we’re trying this, if you hate it we never go back.”
I didn’t even remember the open gym was at the west side rec center, not the one by our house, so I got lost on the way through a neighborhood with all the streets named after trees that all look the same. We pulled into the parking lot 10 minutes late, slush from the road melting all over the floor mats of my minivan. When Lila looked through the gym window and saw all the other girls already stretching, most of them laughing together like they’d known each other forever, she grabbed my wrist so hard her nails left a mark and said “I’m not going in. My hair looks stupid and I don’t know anyone.” We hid behind the back of my van for seven whole minutes. My boots were soaked through, I had to pee so bad I was shifting from foot to foot, and I almost just said fine, let’s go get Burger King and call it a day. But I didn’t. I said “You just go in for 20 minutes. If you still hate it at 20 minutes, we leave, no guilt, no yelling, I’ll even get you a chocolate shake on the way home. Deal?” She sighed that big 12-year-old sigh and agreed.
The first 10 minutes inside were just as awkward as I expected. Lila’s kneepads were the thin ones from rec league, with a hole in the left one from when she fell chasing our cat Mochi last summer, and the first serve of the first drill hit her straight in the chest. She gasped, stumbled back, and the whole drill stopped for a second. I was up in the bleachers, holding my cold gas station coffee, cringing so hard my shoulders hurt, ready to grab her bag and bolt. But the coach just laughed and yelled “You ever see a serve that wants a hug that bad?” and the girl standing next to Lila handed her a bottle of water and asked where she got her Harry Styles hoodie. By the end of the hour, she was laughing when someone missed a hit, and she asked if she could sign up when we got to the car.
Everyone warns you that club volleyball is super expensive and super intense, right? That you have to drop thousands on private lessons before you even try out, that you’ll be traveling three hours every weekend for tournaments, that all the parents are crazy yelling at the ref. Yeah, that’s the elite teams, I guess. But we’re in the low-key rec division, the one for kids who just like playing and don’t want to turn it into a full-time job. It’s $65 a month, practice one night a week, tournaments once a month an hour away max. Lila still uses her beat up rec league ball with the peeling Frozen sticker on it, and no one has said a word about it. Half the girls on the team don’t have fancy $100 volleyball shoes, just old sneakers. No one cares.
There’s the annoying stuff, don’t get me wrong. I hate waking up at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday for tournaments, when I could be sleeping in and drinking my coffee slow instead of chugging it in the car. I hate that the gym bleachers are freezing in the winter and sticky with old Gatorade in the fall. I just bought Lila new volleyball shoes three months ago, and she already grew out of them. Last month we had a tournament where she sat the whole first half, didn’t get to play a single point, and I sat there listening to a dad two rows down yell at the ref so loud my ears rang, and I thought what are we even doing here. That part sucks. I still leave early half the time to get coffee and sit in the car instead of watching the whole game.
I also signed her up to get her off her phone, remember? That was my whole big reason. Turns out, she still spends just as much time on her phone, but now it’s different. It’s not mindless scrolling on the couch. It’s texting the group chat about what flavor ice cream they’re getting after practice, it’s sending each other memes about the coach’s weird neon socks, it’s working out who’s doing carpool for the next tournament. It’s still screen time, but it’s screen time that’s about people, not algorithms. I’ll take that.
The weird thing I didn’t expect is how much it’s just her thing, not mine. Lila used to make me order her food for her at restaurants when she was 12, she’d get so anxious talking to strangers she’d hide behind me. Now she texts the coach herself when she has to miss practice for a math test, she remembered everyone’s allergies when it was her turn to bring snacks, she planned the whole post-tournament ice cream run without asking me for any help. It’s not that she’s become some super confident superstar, she still gets nervous before big points, she still cried when she got put on the B team for our last tournament. I didn’t give her some big speech about grit or working hard. I just got her mint chocolate chip ice cream and said that sucks, I’d be upset too. She went back to practice the next week anyway, because she wanted to hang out with her friends after.
I’m not here to tell you every kid needs to do club volleyball, that it fixes all your problems or that it’s the best thing you’ll ever do for your kid. If your kid hates it, don’t force them. If you can’t afford it, that’s fine too. But if your kid’s been sitting around bored, kind of likes hitting a ball around, and you’re tired of the crumbs on your couch too? It’s worth dragging them to that first open gym. Even if you stand in the parking lot for 10 minutes with a full bladder and wet boots. Even if you spend half the tournament sitting in the car scrolling your own phone. It’s messy, it’s annoying, it’s not perfect. But it gives them something that’s just theirs. That’s more than I expected, honestly. (Word count: 1182)
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