Introducing Your Kids to Club Volleyball: What I Wish I Knew Before We Started
The rain streaked the minivan windows last April, and my 12-year-old, Lila, was picking at a loose thread on her hoodie, still complaining about rec soccer’s end-of-season banquet where she’d gotten a participation trophy and 12 minutes of total play time all year. We stopped at a red light downtown, and she pointed at a water-stained flyer taped to the pole: 12U Club Volleyball Tryouts – No Experience Required. “Can I try that?” she asked. I almost said no. All I knew about club volleyball was what I’d seen on social media: parents dropping thousands on cross-country travel, coaches yelling at 13-year-olds for missed serves, teams full of kids who’d been playing since they could walk. But Lila hadn’t wanted to try any new after-school activity in almost a year, so I said okay. I texted the number on the flyer, and we showed up 20 minutes later with nothing but a pair of old sneakers and a half-empty bottle of lemonade.
The gym smelled like floor wax and overripe bananas from the snack bar, and there were 17 other kids milling around, most of them just as awkward as Lila. I sat in the back of the bleachers next to another mom who told me her daughter had also never played a team sport before, and they were only there because the girl liked the team’s hoodie design. Lila tripped over her own feet during the first drill, hit a practice pass straight into the bleachers, and spent the first 20 minutes hiding at the back of the line. When tryouts ended, the coach pulled me aside and said she’d love to have Lila on the developmental team – the entry-level group for new players, one practice a week, one local tournament a month, no out-of-state travel required. The fee was $325 for the whole season, which was less than we’d spent on soccer uniforms and travel that year. I said yes before I could overthink it.
The first few practices, Lila would come home quiet, saying she was terrible at hitting and she kept missing serves. I asked if she wanted to quit, and she said no, she just needed to practice more. What surprised me most was how the coach ran things. When a kid messed up, she didn’t yell or single anyone out. She’d walk over, adjust their shoulder position an inch or two, and say “try that again” like it was no big deal. Volleyball requires you to call the ball – you have to yell “mine!” to let your teammates know you’re going for it, otherwise two people go for the same ball and it drops. Lila has always been the quiet kid in class, the one who never raises her hand even if she knows the answer, because she’s scared of being wrong. For the first two weeks, she never called the ball. She’d just stand there, shoulders hunched, and let someone else take it. By week four, I was sitting in the bleachers during practice, and I heard her yell “MINE!” so loud the whole gym turned. She missed the pass, but everyone clapped anyway.
That’s when I started realizing all the assumptions I had about club volleyball were wrong. If you’re a parent thinking about introducing your kid, the first thing I’d tell you is to ask about entry-level teams specifically. Most clubs put their elite national travel teams front and center on their website, so it looks like it’s all for super competitive kids, but almost every local club has a developmental division for new players that’s low-cost and low-pressure. Second, don’t buy all the gear upfront. We waited three weeks to buy kneepads, after Lila confirmed she wanted to keep going. The club let her borrow a jersey for the first tournament, so we didn’t drop $150 on gear she never would’ve used if she quit. Third, it’s okay to not go to every single event. When Lila woke up with a stuffy nose before a tournament in May, I let her stay home and watch movies. I emailed the coach ahead of time, and she didn’t even blink – she said developmental rosters are supposed to work around kids’ lives, not the other way around.
Lila’s team lost every set at their first three tournaments. No one cared. After every game, the whole team walks out for ice cream together, and they spend the whole time making fun of each other’s worst plays. Last month, they won their first set of the season, and the girls all ran around the gym screaming like they’d won a national championship. Lila came home that day and told me she’d signed up for student council at school, because “it’s just yelling in front of people, right? I can do that.” I didn’t expect club volleyball to help her speak up more in class, but that’s exactly what it did. It’s a low-stakes place to practice being wrong, to practice making yourself heard, to practice working with a group of people who are all learning at the same speed.
Last weekend, we went to their end-of-season pizza party. Lila got a little certificate that said “Most Improved Caller” with a clipart volleyball on it, and she taped it to the fridge right next to her lopsided clay mug from 4th grade art class. We still don’t know if she’ll play again next year. She’s been talking about trying jazz dance in the fall, and I told her she can do whatever she wants. I don’t care if she never plays another game of volleyball. What I got out of this season was a reminder that trying something new doesn’t have to be about being the best, or getting a scholarship, or checking a box for college applications. It can just be about a rainy Saturday where your kid decides to try something scary, and it works out better than you expected. We still have an extra pair of kneepads we bought on sale that don’t fit Lila, and we’re passing them on to a new player trying out next month. It’s not a perfect system – we still spend half of tournament Saturday driving around looking for a decent coffee shop, and Lila still forgets her water bottle at home at least once a month. But it’s been good, for both of us, more than I ever thought it would be when we pulled up to that tryout in the rain.
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