Now Entering the Hell that is Club Volleyball

We didn't do it for the "scholarship" aspect. We did it for friendship, exercise, discipline.
Also, at the first parents meeting at the high school, the coach (who also coached at the club we picked) told the parents: "I cannot require your daughter to play club. That said, they are going to need to play club if they are going to make the team here." My daughter quit after her sophomore year even though she would have been on the varsity as a junior.

 

I hope somebody was recording the meeting, so someday the tape can be used to get the coach fired.

Club coaches interfering with HS sports programs, in one form or another, is probably the root of 90% of the problems in teenage sports over the last 25 years.

 

I can see it being OK if the coach qualified his statement with something like, "Playing club is going to give you more experience at a higher level, which is going to benefit your kid when they are competing against others who are also playing club for a spot on this team.," or something like that.

But saying "You can't play for me if you don't play club" is bullshit.

 

Having a HS coach make any reference whatsoever to what goes on on the club team is bullshit.

Club teams and HS teams exist and function for very different, sometimes diametrically opposed, objectives.

If a kid shows up for the first day of HS practice and wows the coach with all the skills and technique and experience they gained on the club team, whoopee for them.

But if some other kid shows up who didn't play club, who spent the summer playing another sport or two other sports or playing the flute, or spent the whole summer eating twinkies and smoking reefer, and can run faster or jump higher or do whatever the hell better, which makes them a better player, then they ought to make the goddamn team.

 

I think some of you guys are interpreting this wrong. The best 12-15 players make the high school team. My kid wouldn't have made it if she had walked in first day with no prior experience. She had one year of club before getting to high school and that helped her make the team. The coach wasn't interfering, he was stating the facts of life. And, in terms of volleyball, most people think club is more important than high school.

 

So basically the coach says, "I know according to district policies I cannot require the players to play club. I don't care; I am going to require it anyway. By the way, don't be late with your club fee payment."

 

No, man, you're misinterpreting. He was telling it like it is. He said that he can't make you play club but you need to to reach a level to play on the high school team. Hey, if some kid came in with no prior experience and was nonetheless good enough to make the team, they would make the team. But the reality is, it just doesn't happen.

 

Basically it doesn't happen 95% of the time because if the last cut comes down to a kid who has played club and (especially) a kid who has played another sport, the coach will give the spot to their travel team pet poodle, to reiterate the point that you should play club if you want to make varsity.

The 5% of the time it does NOT happen, of course, is when the kid is a stud athlete who is a blue-chip legit college prospect anyway -- those people pretty much get to do what they want in any case.

But the people who are 'pretty good' athletes in 2 or 3 sports, tough crap for them.

 

If memory serves, Starman, didn't Michigan finally switch high school volleyball season to fall (and girls basketball to winter) because of pressure from club volleyball coaches/parents?

 

Yep. Basketball people, in general, were quite happy with the seasons the way they were.

Gym access, ref availability and fan/ media attention were considerably better for girls hoops under the old scheduling.

But the volleyball clubs were unhappy, so off to court they went.

The real funny thing of course is that college recruiters pay barely a piss-puddle of attention to high school volleyball anyway.

But, to be blunt, that's gotten to be pretty much true for basketball, too.

 

Well, I have my answer (at least preliminary). And that answer is, "Damn big."

 

So here's my report from the front lines of my daughter's first tournament ...

This was a two-day affair, with pool play on Saturday and bracket play today. There were 30 teams (12s and 13s) playing in the facility, at one of those nondescript industrial buildings that you see ringing big cities. We were up at 5 a.m. and out of the house at 6 a.m. on both days. Our girls played three matches on Saturday, but they also had to take turn serving as line judges and scorekeepers/bookkeepers in other teams' matches. These assignments are scheduled as rigidly as actual matches, and teams that miss or are late to these duties can lose points/sets in subsequent matches.

There was substantial variability in the makeup of the teams. The team that dominated my daughter's pool had a core of five players who had been together for about four years (I chatted up one of the dads). These girls are all home-schooled (said the dad), and came from several suburbs around the area. Other teams were from multiple-team outfits (such as my daughter's). My daughter's team got its ass handed to it by that bad-ass team but played well the rest of the tournament and wound up winning the consolation bracket.

It was absolutely an ass-whipping. The crowds, the kids, the whistles ... good lord, it was a killer. Fun, because I really enjoy watching her play, but still exhausting.

Plenty of 6s but plenty more not-6s.