Introducing Kids to Club Volleyball: What I Learned From My 12-Year-Old’s First Season
The first practice of my daughter Mia’s club volleyball season started with me leaning against my minivan in a dim high school parking lot, watching Mia pick at the chipped blue nail polish on her thumb and admit she’d left her knee pads on the kitchen counter. I’d already heard all the warnings by that point: club volleyball is just for future college recruits, it costs a small fortune, parents scream at refs from the bleachers and 13-year-olds burn out before they hit high school. I’d half talked myself out of signing her up two weeks earlier, but she’d begged – after a year of rec league, where half the girls spent practice picking dandelions on the side of the court, she wanted to play more. So I grabbed the extra pair of my old high school knee pads from the trunk (they were a little too big, but they worked) and told her we’d just go in for 10 minutes. If she hated it, we’d leave and get ice cream.
I sat in the back of the bleachers, half expecting to see the chaos I’d heard about. Instead, the coach – a 22-year-old recent college grad who still played rec league herself – started practice with a round of “two truths and a snack” where every girl had to share her favorite game day snack. Most of the girls didn’t know each other either, it turned out. Half were like Mia, coming from rec, wanting more play time without the pressure of going pro. I sat there for two hours, grading the stack of third grade papers I’d brought with me (I’m a teacher, so work always comes along) and no one yelled once. When an 11-year-old missed five passes in a row during drill, the coach just walked over, adjusted her arm position, and said “try again, I’ve got you.”
Three weeks later, we were up at 5:30am for our first tournament, driving 45 minutes to a rec center on the other side of town. I forgot extra socks, so we stopped at a gas station and bought a $3 pair of athletic socks that had unicorns on them. Mia sat the whole first set, and I braced for the silent pout in the car ride home. Instead, she was on the edge of the bench, cheering so loud her voice went hoarse. When she got in for the second set, she missed three serves in a row, and I felt my shoulders tense up. But the coach called a quick time out, didn’t draw her aside for a lecture, just wiped her hand on the side of her shorts and said “stand a little closer to the line, and toss the ball higher than you think you need to. You’ve got this.” Next serve went right over the net, right into the back corner.
I went into this whole thing thinking club volleyball was only for kids who were planning to get a scholarship. What I didn’t expect was how much it would teach her that has nothing to do with volleyball. A month into the season, we had a night where Mia had a big math test the next day, practice ran until 8:30 on a school night, and she collapsed on the floor by the front door when we got home, saying she hated it and she never wanted to go back. I didn’t give her the big “you made a commitment, you have to stick it out” speech I’d planned. Instead, I told her we could skip next week’s practice, study for the test, and decide what she wanted after that. She took the test, got an A-, and the next day told me she wanted to go back – her team was short a setter for the next tournament, and they needed her. That’s the thing no one tells you: it’s not all about winning. It’s about learning how to show up even when you’re tired, and how to adjust when you mess up, and how to be part of a group that counts on you.
A lot of parents I talk to are scared off by club volleyball, and I get it. But there are small, low-risk ways to try it that don’t require remortgaging your house or committing to four years of 6am tournaments. First, start with a development team, not the top-tier elite squad. Almost every local club has an entry-level team for kids 10-14 that practices twice a week instead of four, only travels to tournaments within an hour’s drive, and costs about a third of what the elite teams cost. Second, always ask to sit in on a free practice before you commit. I did that with two clubs before I picked this one – the first one I visited had a coach yelling at 12-year-olds for talking during drills, so I crossed that off the list immediately. No question is rude here, most clubs expect new parents to want to check things out first. Third, don’t feel pressured to buy all the fancy gear right away. Mia used my old knee pads for three months, borrowed an extra club shirt from a teammate the first tournament, and we only bought new gear after she told me she definitely wanted to stay for the whole season. Most clubs also have payment plans and need-based scholarships for entry-level teams, so don’t write it off just because the sticker price looks high. I asked about that at our club, and they had three open scholarship slots for development team players that no one had applied for that season, because people assume they’re only for elite players.
It’s the end of the first season now. Mia’s team got 5th out of 8 teams at the regional tournament, and she came home with a participation medal that she taped to her bathroom mirror. She still forgets her water bottle at practice half the time, and she still misses more serves than she makes during close games. Last week, she asked if she can sign up again next year, and I said yes. I still have moments where I wonder if we’re spending too many weekends in gyms, when she could be riding bikes with her neighborhood friends or just laying on the couch reading. It’s not perfect, and it’s not for every kid. If Mia had decided she hated it after the first month, we would have left, no guilt. But so far, it’s worked. It’s just a bunch of kids who like hitting a ball around, learning how to show up for each other. That’s more than I expected out of a first season.
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