Introducing Your Kid to Club Volleyball: What I Wish I Knew Before We Started
It was a Tuesday in September, I was folding mismatched soccer socks when Lila, my 12-year-old, dropped her dented water bottle on the coffee table and said she was done with rec soccer. Said she’d spent the last three games sitting on the bench watching the coach’s niece run up and down the field, and she’d rather clean the bathroom than go back next week. I didn’t argue. I’d watched the same games. An hour later, her best friend Mia texted asking if Lila wanted to come to club volleyball tryouts that weekend. I’d never thought about volleyball, and everything I’d heard about club sports made me nervous: expensive, hyper-competitive, full of parents yelling from the bleachers. But Lila’s eyes lit up, so I said okay.
I texted the club coordinator, paid the $35 tryout fee I’d budgeted for coffee that week, and borrowed a pair of too-big knee pads from the woman down the street whose kid had aged out of 12s. Lila wore my old gray college workout shorts because we didn’t have the fancy spandex everyone talks about, and we showed up 10 minutes early to a gym that smelled like old rubber and lemon disinfectant. I sat in the bleachers with a handful of other parents, all of us scrolling our phones and pretending we weren’t nervous. I kept leaning over to watch, thinking Lila had only ever hit a volleyball in gym class. She was going to be the worst one there, and she’d leave embarrassed.
The coach, a woman in her 30s with a neon whistle, didn’t split the group into “good” and “new” like I expected. She started with 15 minutes of silly warm-ups: crab walk tag, hitting a balloon back and forth over the net, no score kept. She walked around to every kid, adjusted their stance, joked about how bad her own first tryout was. By the end of the hour, Lila was red-faced and laughing, and she didn’t even want to leave when it was over. A week later, we got the email: she’d made the developmental team, the squad for kids who’d never played before, not the elite travel team everyone stresses about.
I went into this thinking club volleyball was only for kids who knew how to spike before middle school, or for parents who could drop thousands on gear and travel. That’s the myth most people hear, but what I found is that almost every local club has entry-level teams for new players, and most work with you on fees. We ended up paying $100 less a season than I paid for Lila’s private art lessons the year before, and the club had a small scholarship fund for families who needed extra help. You also don’t need all the fancy gear to start. We borrowed knee pads for the first two months, used a $20 volleyball I got at Target, and only bought the required team jersey when we had to for tournaments. No one cared that our gear wasn’t name brand.
After a month of practice, Lila came out to the car crying after missing 12 serves in a row during scrimmage. I was already turning the car on to go get ice cream and talk about quitting, when she wiped her face and said the coach pulled her aside after. Didn’t yell, didn’t tell her she had to be better by next week. Just moved her left foot an inch to the left and showed her how to toss the ball a little higher, and said, “Mistakes just mean you’re trying something you can’t do yet.” That’s when I realized this wasn’t like the rec soccer we left.
I used to ask her after every practice and game, “Did you win? How many points did you score?” It took her snapping at me one day (“I don’t care about points, stop asking”) to realize I was bringing all my own wrong expectations to this. I’d bought into the idea that club sports are all about winning and moving up, so I treated every practice like it was a test. Now I ask two things, every time: “What’s the funniest thing that happened today?” and “Did anyone help you with something?” That’s it. It’s a small shift, but it completely changed how she talks to me about volleyball. She tells me about the time her team accidentally scored on themselves and everyone laughed so hard they couldn’t stand up, or that the girl who’s the best spiker stayed after practice to help her practice serving. That’s the stuff that sticks, not the final score.
Lila’s always been shy. She’d make me order her food at McDonald’s until she was 11, because she was scared to talk to the cashier. Now, she texts her team to check what time practice is, she calls the snack bar to order her own Gatorade before games, she even talked to the ref last month when she thought a call was wrong. I didn’t force her to do any of that. It just happened, because she had to do it to be on the team. It’s her thing, not mine.
It’s not all perfect. We still have to rush out of the house on Saturday mornings at 7 a.m. before I’ve had coffee, we’ve missed two family birthday dinners because of tournaments, and last month Lila missed the game-winning serve at our first tournament and sat in the backseat eating a cold cheeseburger for 20 minutes without saying a word. I still have moments where I wonder if we’re spending too much time running to the gym, if it’s putting too much pressure on her. But then I see her running into the gym, high-fiving her teammates before practice even starts, and I remember why we did this.
I don’t know if she’ll play in high school, or even if she’ll still want to play next year. That’s fine. This wasn’t about making her a star athlete. It was about letting her try something that was hers, that I didn’t push her into. If you have a kid who’s bored with their current sport, or looking for something new, you don’t have to write off club volleyball because you think it’s too expensive or too competitive. Just start small. Borrow gear, try a developmental team, ask the club about payment plans or scholarships if you need them. Stop asking about the score, and just let them play. Right now, that’s working for us. We’ll see what happens next season.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Introducing Your Kid to Club Volleyball: What I Wish I Knew Before We Started