Why and How to Introduce Your Kid to Club Volleyball: A Parent’s Real Experience
The gravel of the Target parking lot crunched under my 12-year-old Lila’s cleats after her final rec soccer game last spring, when she stopped mid-step and said, “I’m done. I don’t want to play anymore.” I’d seen it coming—she’d spent 80% of the season on the bench, scrolling TikTok on the sidelines when she wasn’t playing, and had stopped trying to score halfway through the fall. Still, I panicked a little. If we didn’t have soccer twice a week, what would she do besides sit on the couch eating goldfish and watching TikTok compilations?
That night, my friend Sarah, whose daughter played volleyball, texted out of the blue. Her local club was holding open tryouts for an entry-level 12U team, and they were looking for a couple more players. Did Lila want to come?
My first thought was all the stereotypes I’d heard: club volleyball is for rich, hyper-competitive families who start their kids training at 7, it costs thousands of dollars a year, parents scream at refs and 12-year-old officials over bad calls, and you have to commit to five practices a week. I said as much to Sarah, and she just laughed. “Come to tryouts. If you hate it, you leave. No pressure.” Lila, who’d spent the previous summer whacking volleyballs over the net at the city Y camp, jumped at the chance. So I packed a water bottle (and forgot the kneepads, of course) and we showed up.
The gym smelled like lemon cleaner and sweat, and Lila was the only kid there without a custom team bag. But the head coach found her within five minutes, introduced himself, and told her to just play, no need to be perfect. I sat in the bleachers and ended up chatting with another mom, Mia, whose son was also trying out for the first time. He’d had to quit baseball after a growth plate injury in his elbow, and they’d been looking for a low-impact team sport. She told me the entry-level developmental team was only $325 for the whole season, which included all practices, all local tournament fees, and the official team jersey. Out-of-town tournaments were completely optional, you only paid if you chose to go. That was a third of what I’d paid for Lila’s soccer season the year before. I’d had no idea.
Lila made the team, and we started twice-weekly after-school practices. At first, she could barely get a serve over the net, and she was too shy to call for the ball, so she’d just hang back and let her teammates take every hit. But the coach didn’t push her to be perfect. After every practice, he’d spend 10 minutes working on serve tosses with the new kids, no extra charge. Within a month, she was calling “mine” before every ball that came near her, and high-fiving her teammates even when they messed up.
I didn’t expect the off-court changes. Lila has always been quiet, the kind of kid who lets other people do all the talking in group projects at school. But after a couple months of volleyball, her teacher sent me a note saying she’d volunteered to lead her group’s science presentation. When I asked her about it later, she shrugged and said, “You have to talk in volleyball, or you run into each other. It’s just what you do.”
It’s not all smooth sailing. Last month, we spent an all-day Saturday tournament in a gym that had broken AC, it was 85 degrees inside, and Lila missed five straight serves in the final set. They lost by two points, and she stormed off the court, tears streaming down her face, and said she never wanted to play again. I didn’t give her a big speech about pushing through. I just grabbed a cold Gatorade from the vending machine (it cost $5, ugh) and said, “That sucked. I’d be upset too. Do you want to go home and go to bed, or do you want to stop at the taco place on the way home and not talk about volleyball ever again for the rest of the day?” She chose tacos. By the time we finished our order, she was laughing about the time one of her teammates accidentally hit the ball into the coach’s water bottle, and the next morning she was asking what time practice was that week.
If you’re on the fence about introducing your kid to club volleyball, there are a few things I learned that might help. First, call the club directly and ask specifically about entry-level or developmental teams for new players. Don’t just scroll their website and assume all their teams are for elite athletes. Almost every community has clubs that reserve spots for kids who are new to the sport, and most coaches would rather have an excited, communicative kid than a talented kid who doesn’t want to be there.
Second, don’t drop a ton of money on new gear right away. Our club keeps a bin of used gear by the front desk—kneepads, shoes, bags that older kids outgrew, donated by parents. We got Lila a barely used pair of volleyball shoes for $15, instead of buying an $80 new pair that she’ll outgrow in six months. The only thing we had to buy new was the official team jersey, which was included in our season fee.
Third, set the expectation upfront that quitting after one season is totally okay. We told Lila before she joined that we were only signing up for one season, and if she hated it, we wouldn’t bug her to re-sign, no guilt, no arguments. That took all the pressure off both of us. I don’t nag her to practice serves in the driveway on the weekends, and she doesn’t feel like she has to stick with it just because we paid the fee.
We still don’t know if this is a forever thing. Lila might decide next year that she wants to try art club instead, or cross country, and that’s fine. We still have mornings where she drags her feet getting to practice, and I still forget to pack her a snack half the time. But right now, it works. She gets three hours a week away from her phone, she has a group of friends that aren’t just the kids she sits next to in math class, and she’s learned that messing up five serves in a row doesn’t mean the whole world ends. If your kid is bored with their current sport, or looking for something new, it’s worth stopping by a local tryout. You might be surprised, like I was, that it’s not half as intimidating as you think.
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