Introducing Kids to Club Volleyball: What Parents Need To Know Before They Try Out
I’m leaning against a scuffed cinder block gym wall at 8 a.m. on a rainy Saturday, holding a crumpled disposable water bottle I forgot to fill, watching my 11-year-old Lila hover by the gym entrance, picking at the frayed cuff of her cousin’s hand-me-down knee pads. Two months earlier, she’d quit rec volleyball after spending six straight games on the bench, complaining that no one took it seriously enough. When our neighbor, whose daughter played club, suggested Lila try out, I’d immediately panicked. I’d bought into the stereotype that club volleyball was only for 6-foot-tall prodigies whose parents spent thousands on travel and private lessons, all chasing a distant college scholarship. I was just a mom working full time whose kid wanted to play more than eight weekends a year.
Lila wandered over after the first 45-minute scrimmage, her face pink from the heat, and told me she’d messed up three overhand passes in a row and tripped over her own feet going for a dig. I had my hand on my car keys ready to leave, get donuts down the street and call it a day, when she wiped her cheek on her shoulder and said, “Wait, the second round starts in 10 minutes. I want to go back.”
She made the entry-level C team, a group of kids all new to club, with no expectation of out-of-state travel or college recruitment. It was exactly what we needed. The first six months were a learning curve for both of us: practice twice a week after school, tournaments one weekend a month, all within an hour’s drive of our house. We linked up with three other families from our neighborhood to carpool, so I only drive to practice once a week and to a tournament once every three months, cutting down on time and gas costs significantly. The annual fee for the entry team was a quarter of what the elite travel team cost, because we skipped the cross-country tournaments and fancy training retreats. I didn’t know clubs even offered these tiers when I first started looking, and that’s the first thing I tell other curious parents now.
Three months into the first season, Lila hit her first rough patch. She spent three straight tournaments on the bench for most of each game, and came home one night slamming the front door, throwing her knee pads on the couch and saying the coach liked the other setter better. I almost drafted an angry email to the coach before I paused, remembering how much Lila hated when I stepped in to fix her problems at school. Instead of asking what the coach was doing wrong, I asked her what she thought she could improve on. She mumbled that she kept missing short serves, so the coach didn’t trust her in close games. We made a loose plan: we’d go to the outdoor court at the neighborhood park for 20 minutes after dinner every Monday and Wednesday, just practice short serves. No yelling, no private lessons, just me tossing the ball and her hitting it over the net. After three weeks, at the next tournament, the coach put her in for the final set, and she served two straight aces that won the game.
That’s the thing no one tells you about entry-level club volleyball. It’s not about winning. It’s about kids learning that showing up to work on the thing you’re bad at actually changes things. You don’t get that when you only play 8 games a year and half the team never touches the ball consistently.
I picked up a few small, practical tricks along the way that I pass along to other parents considering it. First, don’t run out and buy all new gear right away. Almost every club has a parent group or message board where people sell used gear their kids have outgrown. I got a barely used pair of volleyball shoes for $20, instead of the $80 new ones, and Lila outgrew them 10 months later anyway, so I sold them again to another new parent. Second, always take advantage of free drop-in practices most clubs offer before tryouts. Let your kid test the pace and the vibe before you commit to anything, and tell them up front if they hate it, you’ll get ice cream after and never come back. That takes all the pressure off for nervous kids. Third, ask explicitly for entry-level teams when you first reach out. Don’t assume you have to start with the competitive travel group; most clubs are happy to place new players where they fit.
It’s not all victory pizza and high fives, of course. We’ve missed three of my family’s birthday dinners in the last two years because they fell on tournament weekends. Lila had to drop the weekly art class she loved because it conflicted with Tuesday practice. Some weekends, I’d rather stay home and garden than sit on hard gym bleachers for 8 hours, eating overpriced concession stand popcorn. I don’t know if she’ll stick with it long term, either. Next year she’s trying out for the high school team, and if she doesn’t make it, she says she’ll stay with the club, but if she decides she’d rather do something else, that’s fine too.
Last month, we were at a local tournament, and Lila’s team lost in the quarterfinals. Afterward, all the girls went out for pepperoni pizza at the place down the street from the gym. They spent the whole time laughing about the play where one of them accidentally spiked the ball into the coach’s water bottle, drenching her game notebook. No one was crying about losing, no one was talking about scholarships or college. I sat in the back booth picking at a piece of crust, and I thought back to that rainy tryout morning two years earlier, when I was convinced we were out of our league. It turns out, you don’t have to be a prodigy parent or have a huge budget to let your kid try club volleyball. Most of the time, you just have to show up, remember to fill the water bottle more often than I do, and let them figure out if it’s for them. Right now, it’s working for us. We’ll see what happens next.
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