Introducing Kids to Club Volleyball: What I Learned From My Kid’s First Season
The backseat smelled like sweaty knee pads and cherry Gatorade last May, when my 12-year-old Lila crumpled her rec league participation certificate into a ball and said she never wanted to play volleyball that way again. “Everyone just stands around waiting for the tallest girl to hit the ball,” she said, picking at a loose seam on her sock. “I want to actually get better at it.” I’d heard enough horror stories about club volleyball to want to say no: four-figure fees, 5 a.m. practices, parents screaming at 13-year-old refs, weekends spent driving three hours to tournaments that ended in tears. But Lila never asked for extra stuff like this. I said we’d go to one tryout, just to see.
The gym was dusty and smelled like old rubber when we walked in. Lila realized she’d left her knee pads on the kitchen counter, so we borrowed a pair from the club director that were twice her size. She spent the whole hour of drills yanking them back up her thighs between plays. I stood by the bleachers scrolling my email, expecting her to hate it, to tug on my sleeve after 20 minutes and ask to leave for ice cream. Instead, after the tryout ended, the head coach pulled me aside. She said Lila wasn’t the most athletic kid there, but she watched where the ball was going before it was hit, she apologized when she messed up and asked how to fix it instead of walking away. They had a spot on their developmental team—no out-of-state travel, half the fee of the elite squads, just twice a week practice and two local tournaments a season. I said yes, mostly because Lila was bouncing on her heels behind me nodding so hard her ponytail came loose.
We settled into a routine fast. We do homework in the 15-minute drive to the gym, Lila working on math worksheets on her lap while I eat a gas station granola bar. Some nights we eat turkey sandwiches in the parking lot after practice instead of cooking, which Lila thinks is a special treat. The first month, she came home sore every day, complained that her overhand serve never cleared the net, that all the other girls on the team had been playing longer than she had. I almost suggested we quit, that we could go back to rec league or try soccer instead. But then one night she walked in the door grinning, and said the coach stayed after with her and three other new girls to practice serving for 20 minutes, and she got three over in a row. She sent a 10-second video of the last one to her grandma that night.
Our first tournament was in October, in a cold high school gym with creaky folding bleachers. Lila got put in to start the second set, and she served four times in a row. She missed all four—one hit the net so hard it knocked the referee’s water bottle off the stand. The coach pulled her out. I watched from the stands, twisting my own water bottle, and saw Lila wipe her cheek on her sleeve a couple times. I was already grabbing my jacket to go down and get her, ready to say we could leave early and get whatever ice cream she wanted. But after the game ended, she walked over to me, shoulders hunched, and said “Coach said my toss was too far in front of me. Can we set up the portable net in the driveway after dinner? I need to practice.” That hit me, because a year before, if she messed up that bad at something, she would have refused to ever try it again.
I talk to a lot of parents who say club volleyball is too intense for middle schoolers, that it sucks all the fun out of the sport. I get that—if you sign up for an elite team when your kid just wants to mess around, it’s going to be miserable. But there’s a middle ground most people don’t talk about, and I picked up a few small, concrete things that made this work for us that other parents can try too. First, don’t just Google “club volleyball near me” and pick the first big name. Ask your kid’s rec league coach if they know of any clubs that run developmental teams for new players. Almost every local club has them, they’re cheaper, less travel, and the coaches are there to teach, not just win tournaments. Second, tell the coach upfront what your priorities are before you commit. I told our coach before the season started that school comes first, and if Lila has a big test or a school play, she’ll miss practice, no questions asked. The coach was fine with that—most coaches working with younger kids don’t expect every player to be gunning for a college scholarship. Third, skip asking “did you win?” after games. Ask “did you try that one thing you worked on in practice this week?” It keeps the pressure off and helps kids focus on getting better instead of just the final score.
It’s not all perfect. We miss our weekly family taco night one Monday a month because practice runs late. Lila has had to reschedule her piano lesson twice this season. Last week she stayed up until 9:30 finishing a social studies project because practice ran over, and she was grumpy and tired all the next day. I still wonder sometimes if we’re putting too much on her plate.
But what I didn’t expect was how the lessons from the gym leak into other parts of her life. Last month she got a bad grade on a science test, and instead of crumpling it up and hiding it from me like she used to, she said “I need to ask my teacher for extra help after school this week. It’s just like serving— I just need more practice.” She’s made friends with a couple girls on the team that go to a different middle school, so she had people to sit with at the county fair last month that she wouldn’t have met otherwise.
This season ends in two weeks. Lila already brought home the sign up sheet for next year, and taped it to the fridge. I don’t know if she’ll stick with it forever. Next year she might decide she’d rather do theater or robotics or nothing at all after school, and that’s fine. For right now, though, it’s working. We pack the orange slices and extra hair ties, we do homework in the car, she comes home sore and talking too loud about drills, and it’s just another part of our messy, ordinary routine.
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