Introducing Your Kid to Club Volleyball: What Parents Should Know Before You Sign Up
The coffee in my reusable cup sloshed over the lid onto my jeans as I pulled into the crowded parking lot of the regional rec center, 12-year-old Lila bouncing in the passenger seat next to me, clutching the pair of too-big black knee pads I’d grabbed at Target the night before. I’d spent the previous three nights scrolling mom group threads about club volleyball, reading story after story of overbearing screaming parents, $5,000 annual fees, and 13-year-olds burning out from 20-hour practice weeks. Lila had only played one season of rec league, where half the team spent half of every practice picking dandelions on the sideline. I was halfway to turning the car around when she looked up at me and said, “What if I’m the worst one there?”
I told her what I’d rehearsed on the drive over: Worst case we check out, leave 10 minutes in, and go to the glazed donut shop on 5th. I’ll even buy you the one with rainbow sprinkles. No strings attached. We got out, slung her old soccer bag over her shoulder, and walked in.
I expected the gym to be full of pre-teen girls who’d been playing since they were five, all of them perfecting jump serves while their parents yelled from the bleachers. What I found was half a dozen kids who looked just as nervous as Lila, a coach who didn’t give a big inspiring speech, just handed out water bottles and asked everyone to name their favorite snack. I sat on the bleachers in the back, and the other parents didn’t corner me to talk about tournament rankings. Half of them were scrolling work emails, one was helping a toddler color a dinosaur coloring book, and another was reading a romance novel just like me.
Lila spent the first hour hiding at the back of the passing line. She hit three straight balls into the net, tripped over her own feet during a drill, and when it was her turn to serve, she sent the ball flying into the trash can by the bench. I packed my book halfway through, ready to go when she came over to bail, but after practice she ran up to me chattering, not even mentioning the mess-ups. A 14-year-old alternate on the team had pulled her aside after the drill, she said, and showed her how to tuck her elbow in when she passed. “She said she was terrible for her first six months too,” Lila told me, already asking when the next practice was.
That’s the thing no one tells you when you’re looking into club volleyball for the first time: there are tiers. Most clubs have entry-level, development-focused teams for kids who just want to play more than the 4 games a season rec league offers, not just elite squads that travel across the country for national tournaments. Before we signed anything, we took advantage of the free trial week most clubs offer new players, which meant we didn’t pay a dime to test it out for two practices. That’s the first thing I tell other parents who ask about it: always ask for a trial before you commit. It’s low risk, and you can get a feel for the coach and the team culture before you hand over any money.
The second thing I tell them is don’t buy all the fancy gear upfront. I only bought the knee pads and a new water bottle that first week, and we borrowed a practice volleyball from the rec center for the first month. The club provided the team uniform, we got a hand-me-down gear bag from a neighbor whose kid aged out of the program, and Lila wore her old soccer cleats for three months before we bought actual volleyball shoes. There’s no need to drop hundreds of dollars before you know if your kid will even stick with it.
I also worried it would take over our whole lives, but that hasn’t been the case. Our entry-level team only has two practices a week, and tournaments are optional. When there was a tournament two hours away on the same Sunday we always do brunch with my in-laws for my mother-in-law’s birthday, I expected the coach to push us to go. Instead he just said it was totally fine for her to skip, no penalty, no guilt. If you’re talking to coaches, ask them up front what the attendance policy is for new players. If a coach says you have to miss all family events or skip school for tournaments, that’s your sign to look for another team.
It’s not perfect, of course. It’s still an extra line item in our budget, though at $350 for a full season, it’s actually less than Lila’s weekly piano lessons. Most clubs have sliding scale scholarships for families that need them, which I didn’t realize until I looked through the registration paperwork, so it’s not just for families with extra disposable income like a lot of people assume. Some weeks Lila complains about having to go right after school, and last week she came home saying she didn’t want to go back because she missed every serve in the scrimmage and everyone saw.
I didn’t give her a big speech about grit or sticking with things. I just said that’s okay, we can skip and get donuts, or we can go, stay for ten minutes, and leave if she still hates it. She thought for a minute, then said no, she was going, because her friend Mia saved her a spot in the car pool. Car pooling, by the way, is another easy hack: most team parents set up a shared sign up for rides to practice and tournaments, so you only have to drive every other week. I get two whole hours of uninterrupted reading time every Tuesday, which is more quiet than I get all week at home.
What’s surprised me most is how it’s changed how she handles messing up at school. Lila has always been the kind of kid who crumples up her paper if she gets a problem wrong on the first try and says she’s just bad at math. Now, after months of messing up serves and passing drills over and over, she’ll erase a wrong answer and say “I just need to adjust my feet, like in volleyball” and try again. It’s not a big magical life change, just a small shift that makes both of our lives easier.
Right now, it’s working. We don’t know if she’ll want to play next season, or if she’ll outgrow it and want to try art club instead. That’s fine with me. We tried it, it’s working for now, and if it doesn’t later, we’ll go get donuts and find something else.
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