Introducing Kids to Club Volleyball: What I Learned As A Parent Before Our First Season
The clock read 6:12 a.m. when I pulled into the potholed parking lot of the community rec center, my 12-year-old Mia slouched in the passenger seat picking at a frayed edge on her new knee pads. I held a lukewarm coffee I’d grabbed from the gas station, and I was already convinced I’d made a terrible mistake. Mia had played rec volleyball for two years, and when her best friend Lila asked her to try out for club, I’d said yes on autopilot. All I’d heard about club volleyball was the horror stories: 5 a.m. practices, thousands of dollars in fees, parents screaming at refs from the bleachers. Now I was sitting here watching other parents haul 4-foot rolling gear bags into the gym, and I was this close to telling Mia we could go get pancakes instead.
Mia bounced out of the car anyway, forgetting her ankle brace on the floorboard. I ran into the nearest drugstore to grab a cheap elastic one, and by the time I got back, tryouts had already started. I leaned against the back wall with the other parents, scrolling my email and trying not to eavesdrop on the mom two feet away talking about her 13-year-old’s D1 recruiting profile. Mia was near the back of the pack, messing up her first serve and tripping over her own feet during a drill. I watched her brush off her knees and get back in line, and I was surprised she didn’t glance over at me for a reassuring wave.
When tryouts ended an hour and a half later, she came out pink-cheeked and hungry, and said the coach had asked her back for the second day of cuts. We got tacos on the way home, and she talked nonstop about the drill where they had to dive for the ball, how it felt good to hit the floor hard. A week later, we got the email: she’d made the local B team, the level for kids who play for fun, not for college scholarships. We signed the paperwork, paid the $625 season fee, and suddenly we were a club volleyball family.
I spent the first month stressed about everything: would practice cut into homework time? would we never have a weekend free again? would Mia hate losing all the time and quit anyway? But little changes started popping up that I didn’t expect. Mia used to crumple up math tests and hide them in her backpack if she got a grade lower than an A, convinced she’d messed up everything. After our first tournament, where she missed the game-winning hit and her team lost by two points, she climbed in the car, ordered a cold pepperoni pizza from the place down the road, and said “I just need to practice my approach more. We’ll get them next time.” I didn’t have to talk her down from a panic attack. She just said it, like it was obvious.
I’ve picked up a handful of small, useful things over the season that I wish someone had told me before we started, if you’re on the fence about letting your kid try it. First, don’t buy all the expensive gear before you know they’ll stick with it. I dropped $120 on a custom volleyball bag and $90 on name-brand shoes before tryouts, and now the bag sits in our closet half-empty because Mia prefers to carry her stuff in her school backpack, and the shoes are scuffed so bad from diving drills she doesn’t care if she leaves them in the car. Most entry-level teams provide jerseys, and you can get all the other gear (knee pads, ankle braces) at a big box store for less than $50 total your first season.
Second, always ask about the team level before you commit. A lot of parents don’t realize most clubs offer multiple tiers – you don’t have to sign up for the cross-country travel team with $2,000 fees if your kid just wants more play than rec league. Our team only plays tournaments within an hour and a half of home, one a month, no out-of-state trips. That fits our budget and means we still get most weekends free for family dinners and birthday parties.
Third, carpool as much as you can, and bring your own chair. I split driving with two other parents from our town, which cuts my time behind the wheel in half, and the kids chat and listen to music in the back which they love way more than riding with me. Most tournament venues have way fewer bleachers than you need, so a $10 folding chair from Walmart is worth every penny. I also keep a handful of quarters in my purse for the vending machine that never takes cards, which has gotten me out of more than one pre-tournament meltdown over a missing snack.
Fourth, set a clear homework routine before the season starts. We do 30 minutes of homework right after school, before practice, so it doesn’t all get pushed to Sunday night. I was worried practice would make Mia fall behind, but she’s actually better at wasting less time now – she knows she can’t spend an hour scrolling TikTok after school if she has to leave for practice in 45 minutes. Her grades are still the same, and she’s way more used to planning ahead.
It’s not all perfect. Last week, Mia had practice the night before a big social studies test, so she stayed up an hour late studying and got a B instead of the A she was hoping for. She was annoyed for an hour after she got her test back, but then she said it was worth it because they’d won their scrimmage that week. Some months, when the fee comes out of our bank account, I wonder if we’d be better off just going back to rec league, where practices are once a week and everything is cheaper.
We’re signed up for another season next year, anyway. I don’t know if Mia will ever play high school varsity, let alone college volleyball. Right now, it’s just something she likes doing – she gets to run around, hang out with other kids who like the same thing, and mess up without it ruining her whole week. That’s more than I expected when I pulled into that parking lot at 6 a.m. that first day. We’ll see how it goes.
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