What to Expect When Introducing Your Kid to Club Volleyball: A Parent’s Real Guide
The sticky vending machine ate my dollar at 7:12 a.m. on Lila’s first club volleyball tryout, and I stood there in the cold gym hallway, already convinced I’d made a mistake. My 12-year-old had finished two seasons of rec volleyball a month earlier, and’d been bringing it up unprompted every night at dinner: I want to play more. I want to play with people who actually show up to practice. I’d heard all the horror stories from other parents: thousands of dollars in fees, every weekend consumed by out-of-town tournaments, pushy coaches and parents yelling over 12-year-old serves. I’d almost told her no. But she’d worn through the elastic on her hand-me-down kneepads begging, so I filled out the registration form at 10 p.m. one night and hit send.
I hovered by the gym door with 20 other parents, most of them in fancy branded club hoodies, while I wore an old college sweatshirt with a coffee stain down the front. Lila’s kneepads kept slipping down to her ankles, and in the first drill, she tripped over the baseline while running to hit a ball, and half the other kids turned to look. I wanted to wave her over to leave, already planning how I’d tell her we’d try something else next season. But she just got up, pushed her kneepads back up, and laughed. An hour later, she came bounding out, hair soaked through with sweat, and said she made a friend named Mia who also collects Studio Ghibli pins, and the coach stopped to help her fix her wonky serve toss. We got the acceptance email for the entry-level B team two days later, and Lila screamed so loud she scared the cat.
I’d gone into this whole process assuming club volleyball was only for kids already on track for a college scholarship, kids with parents who had extra time and extra money to burn. That’s what all the Instagram posts and neighborhood parent group chats made it sound like, anyway. But what I didn’t know before I signed up is that most local clubs have entry-level teams for kids who just want to play more than one season a year. Ours charges $600 for a full season, which is less than we spend on summer soccer camp and weekly piano lessons combined, and they let you work 10 hours of tournament check-ins to cut that fee in half. We didn’t have to buy any fancy gear, either. I see parents dropping $300 on custom backpacks and embroidered club apparel, but Lila just uses her old rec league backpack, and the only thing we bought new was a $40 pair of court shoes, which she wears for PE too.
What surprised me most wasn’t the logistics, it’s how it shifted how Lila handles mistakes. For as long as she’s been in school, she’d crumple if she got anything less than an A on a test, or messed up a line in the school play. She’d hide bad grades from me, or refuse to try something new if she thought she wouldn’t be good at it right away. Last month, we played our first out-of-town tournament, and Lila was put in to serve for the final point. She hit it right into the net, and we lost. I walked up to her after the game, ready to mumble that it was okay and buy her an overpriced concession stand snow cone, and she was already leaning against the wall eating one with Mia, saying “I pulled my hand too far back. Next time I’ll remember.” It wasn’t a big, dramatic moment of growth, just a kid acknowledging she messed up and moving on. That’s something she never would have done two years ago.
I have a few small, specific things I tell other parents who ask me about getting their kid into club volleyball now. First, don’t start with the top competitive club in your area. Look for entry-level or community-focused clubs first, most list beginner tryouts right on their website. Second, send a quick email to the coach before tryouts if your kid has only played rec or never played club at all. I mentioned we were just there to see if she liked it, and the coach wrote back that he’d rather have a new kid who works hard than a talented one who doesn’t show up to practice. Third, don’t feel like you have to engage with the intense parent culture. If the group of parents yelling from the sidelines stresses you out, just sit 10 rows back, bring a book or your laptop, and ignore it. I get all my weekly work email answered during tournaments, and no one bothers me.
It’s not all perfect. We’ve had to leave birthday parties early, I’ve rearranged my work schedule twice for last-minute practice changes, and last month we drove 45 minutes to a tournament only to find out our game was canceled because of a gym roof leak. Lila complained the whole way home, but then we stopped for ice cream and she forgot about it. There are some parents who are definitely here for the college recruiting thing, asking 13-year-olds what position they want to play in D1, but that’s not our lane, and we don’t have to participate.
Lila told me last week she might want to quit after this season to try out for the school play. That’s fine with me. We didn’t sign up to get a scholarship, we signed up because she wanted to play more volleyball. Right now, it’s working. She comes home tired, talks about her team over dinner, and doesn’t crumple when she messes up anymore. If she quits, we’ll try something else. But if you’re on the fence about introducing your kid to club volleyball, like I was, you don’t have to have all the answers upfront. You just have to fill out the registration form, remember to pack a water bottle (unlike me that first day), and be ready for a lot of early Saturday mornings. It’s not as scary as the parent group chats make it sound.
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