Why I Finally Caved and Signed My Kid Up for Club Volleyball (And What No One Tells You)
I spent two years saying I’d never do club volleyball. You hear the stories, right? Parents remortgaging their houses for travel fees, 13-year-olds crying because they missed their grandma’s birthday for a tournament out of state, coaches screaming so loud the walls shake. I went to a backyard barbecue last summer where a mom spent 45 minutes complaining about how her son’s club took up every single holiday, and I nodded along and thought, not my kid. Not me. I was perfectly happy with rec league, where games were on Saturday morning for an hour, and the worst thing that happened was the ref was a high school kid who texted through the whole set. My Lila was 12 then, middling at best at volleyball, just liked running around with her friends. I figured that was enough.
Then one Tuesday she came home from school, threw her backpack on the floor, and didn’t even ask for an after-school snack, which is how you know something’s wrong. She slumped at the kitchen table and said all three of her best friends from rec had made club teams. They were already planning car pools and matching team hoodies, and no one was going to be in rec with her next season. She didn’t yell, didn’t throw a fit, just picked at a loose thread on her jeans and said “I just want to play with them.” I made her a peanut butter cracker, told her I’d think about it, and then after she went to bed I ate an entire pint of mint chocolate chip I’d stashed in the back of the freezer and scrolled through 17 different club websites until my eyes hurt.
Tryouts were weirder than I expected. I misread the start time, showed up 20 minutes early, so I sat in my car in the gym parking lot with the heat running, listening to that old Taylor Swift album Lila likes, because I didn’t want to go in and be the early, hovering mom. When I did finally walk in, all the other parents were clustered by the snack machine talking about “bid tournaments” and “at-large selections” and I had no clue what any of that meant. I stood there holding a warm bottle of Dasani I’d grabbed from the gas station, nodding whenever someone looked at me, like I totally get what you’re saying about rankings. Lila came out of the tryout an hour later, her hair soaked through with sweat, and said she thought she messed up every single serve, but it was the most fun she’d had playing volleyball ever. She made the B team, the lowest entry level one, which was a relief. No cross-country travel, no 10-hour practice days, just two practices a week and local tournaments on weekends.
I was right about a lot of the bad stuff, honestly. It’s way too expensive. I had to cancel my monthly book subscription and stop going to that fancy latte place downtown to afford the fees, new knee pads, the jersey, and the shoes that cost more than my last pair of work sneakers. Practice is at 6am on Sundays. Six a.m. I haven’t seen 6am on a Sunday since I worked retail in college. Last week I forgot to set my alarm, woke up at 5:47, ran around the house grabbing Lila’s stuff in the dark, stepped on a Lego that left a bruise the size of a quarter on my foot, and we still got there five minutes late. I forgot to wash her jersey before the last tournament, so I threw it in the wash at 10pm the night before, dried it on high heat to get it done fast, and it shrunk two inches. She had to wear it all tight across the shoulders, and didn’t talk to me for the first hour of the tournament. I spend entire weekends sitting on hard metal bleachers that have a sharp edge right where my lower back curves, and my phone always dies halfway through because the gym has terrible service. Last month I missed my best friend’s 40th birthday brunch because we had an all-day tournament, and I still feel guilty about that.
But what no one tells you is the unglamorous good stuff, right? It’s not all college scouts and national championships. Lila’s team is made up of a bunch of 12 and 13 year old girls who are all bad at serving half the time, who trip over their own feet going for the ball, who spend half of practice giggling so hard they can barely stand up. Last tournament it was 90 degrees outside, and the gym didn’t have working AC, so you could see steam fogging up the windows. Lila twisted her ankle a little in the second game, so she had to sit out the rest. I thought she’d be moping, but when I walked over to the bench to check on her, she and three other girls were sharing a bag of sour patch kids they’d smuggled in, drawing fake tattoos on each other’s ankles with ballpoint pen, and making fun of the way the other team’s coach yelled at every single call. I volunteered to bring snacks to that tournament because I didn’t know that no one expects the new parent to volunteer, so I bought 24 granola bars, checked every single one for nut allergies, and half of them got left in my trunk. I’ve been eating them for breakfast every day for two weeks. They’re not that bad.
I still don’t know if this is a forever thing. Last week Lila came home and said she thinks she might want to try out for the school play next fall, and I said that’s fine, we can quit whenever you want. I wouldn’t push it on any kid, and I wouldn’t tell you you’re doing parenting wrong if you never sign yours up. It’s not for everyone. I still get annoyed when it rains and I have to load all the coolers and chairs into the car, and I still complain about the cost to my husband when we’re going to bed at night.
But sometimes, when I’m sitting on those stupid bleachers, bored out of my mind, I look down at the court and I see Lila yelling after she gets a good block, and high-fiving her team even when they mess up, and I think, okay. This isn’t the perfect after-school activity I imagined when she was little. I thought she’d do art like me, or maybe swimming that ends by 10am on Saturday. But it’s hers. The other night she threw her sweaty knee pads on the kitchen table after practice, and she couldn’t stop talking about how the 14 year old assistant coach stayed after practice to teach her how to jump serve, and how she almost got it over the net. Her face was all pink from running around, and she had Gatorade stains on her shorts, and that moment was just… good. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t some big inspirational thing. It was just a kid who got to do something she wanted with her friends. That’s enough for me, right now.
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