Introducing Your Kid to Club Volleyball: What Every Parent Should Know Before They Try Out
Last April, I found my 12-year-old Lila curled up on our living room couch, half-eaten bag of cheddar Goldfish in her lap, scrolling through her friend’s Instagram Reels. She’d quit rec soccer three weeks earlier, after telling me the coach spent half of every practice yelling at the kids for missing passes, and she’d spent most of her free time since binging baking shows and avoiding any conversation about team sports. “Mom,” she said, without looking up from her phone. “Mia’s doing club volleyball tryouts next week. I wanna go.” I nearly choked on my own coffee. I’d always heard club sports were for super serious athletes, the kind of families that spend every weekend at tournaments and thousands on gear. Lila could barely run a mile without stopping to pet a stray cat. This couldn’t be right.
I almost talked her out of it, but she kept bringing it up every night at dinner, so I filled out the registration form, held my breath, and wrote the $25 tryout fee check. The tryout was at the YMCA 25 minutes across town, I forgot to pack the knee pads she’d begged for that morning, and we hit construction on the highway, so we showed up 10 minutes late. Lila’s hands were shaking when she signed in, and when she walked onto the court, I had to sit down next to a mom with a coffee mug that said “Volleyball Mom” in rhinestones just to keep from pacing. I asked her if most kids here had been playing for years, and she just shrugged and said “Some do, some don’t. My kid started at 12 too.”
I expected the coaches to run them through brutal drills for an hour and cut half the kids immediately, but that’s not what happened. The head coach split them into small groups, spent 10 minutes teaching everyone the basic overhead pass, and then had them play a slow scrimmage where no one was allowed to spike. Lila’s always had weirdly good hand-eye coordination from throwing a baseball back and forth with her dad every Sunday after breakfast, and she kept getting the ball up to her setter even when it came way too fast. When she walked out to the car after, she had grass stains on her favorite leggings, her hair was sticking up all over, and she was grinning so wide her cheeks looked sore. “They put me on the B team,” she said. “Is that too much? Can I do it?”
That was six months ago, and I’ve learned a lot of things I didn’t know before I said yes. First, club volleyball isn’t just for elite athletes gunning for college scholarships. I was terrified the cost would be thousands of dollars a season, but most local clubs have entry-level teams for kids who just want to play, not compete nationally. Our B team costs $350 for the whole season, that includes all practices and most tournament fees, and they let kids borrow gear the first month if you don’t want to buy everything upfront. I didn’t even ask about a sliding scale until after Lila made the team, but they offer that too for families who need it. The time commitment isn’t crazy either—we only have practice one night a week during the school year, and one tournament a month on weekends. I work full time, I can’t manage three practices a week and out-of-state travel every other month, and that’s okay. Most clubs don’t force you to move up to a higher level if you don’t want to.
Lila’s first tournament required us to get up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, I spilled hot coffee all over my only clean sweatshirt, and her team lost all three matches. She only got one serve over the net the whole day, and when she walked over to me after the final game, I braced for her to say she wanted to quit. That’s what she’d done with soccer, with piano, with the Girl Scout troop she joined in fifth grade. Instead, she wiped sweat off her forehead and said “Next time I’ll get three over. I just need more practice.” I’d always jumped in to fix things for her when she struggled before—offering to quit, emailing the coach to complain, telling her she did great even when she knew she hadn’t. This time, I didn’t do that. I just said, “How many more serves did you get over today than you did at tryouts?” She thought for a second and smiled. “Two more.” That was enough. We bought a cheap $60 portable net from Target a few days later, and started doing 15 minutes of serving practice in the backyard after dinner three nights a week. I don’t even play, I just toss the ball to her and count.
That’s the small tip I pass along to other parents who ask me about club volleyball now. If your kid says they want to try it, don’t write it off immediately because you think it’s too competitive or out of your budget. Call the club directly, ask specifically about their entry-level team costs and available discounts, don’t just look at the elite team pricing posted on the homepage. Most clubs would rather take an excited beginner than a pushed, talented kid who doesn’t want to be there. And when your kid comes out of a bad practice or a bad tournament, skip the generic encouragement or the automatic out. Instead, ask them to compare how they did that day to how they did two weeks ago. It’s a tiny shift that lets them decide for themselves if they want to keep going, instead of you pushing them out or pushing them through.
Last month, Lila got an offer to move up to the A team, which requires two practices a week, an extra tournament every month, and twice the cost. She thought about it for two days, then told the coach no. It conflicts with the after-school art class she’s taken since she was 8, she likes her current teammates, and she doesn’t want to give up her weekends to more volleyball. That’s fine with me.
We still have a week left in the season, and we’re going to a tournament two hours away next Saturday. We booked a cheap hotel with two other families from the team, and the kids are already planning to order a giant pizza and swim in the hotel pool after their matches. Lila still uses the borrowed knee pads that are too big for her, she still trips over her own feet going for a dig, and she still misses more serves than she makes. I don’t know if she’ll play next year, or in high school, or anything after that. But right now, it’s working.
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