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Now Entering the Hell that is Club Volleyball

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by doctorquant, Jan 15, 2015.

  1. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    Get to know the parents. Set up a camp. Do something fun for food. Take turns setting a menu. The camp makes it easier for the parents to complain about the coach and the referees.
     
  2. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Saturday's foray of StarSis's family into club volleyball was pretty close to an unmitigated disaster.

    Sis-13, their oldest of 4 girls, decided this school year to dump her other sports and concentrate on volleyball in preparation for HS play beginning next year.

    Club teams were picked at open tryouts in November and she was placed on a squad. However, there were no organized practices until after the new year.

    The club had some upheaval in its coaching lineup -- one woman quit for no announced reason and another quit to walk-on to the injury-ravaged basketball team at the local D-1 university. So the person who was supposed to coach in November is gone, all the coaching assignments are rearranged and on Jan. 6, the new coach (apparent age about 19-21 maybe) meets her team for the first time.

    They had practiced 4 times since then. Sis-13 has made all practices, participated in all drills, etc etc. The club is made up of players from around the entire regional area. Sis-13 reports 3 of the girls are from the same junior high about 25 miles away; nobody else knows each other. The coach has never coached any of them before.

    NewCoach informs Sis-13 she cannot play setter, her preferred position (actually her only position ever since starting to play at age 9) because, at 5-foot-2, she is taller than 3 players on the 10-player roster, and 'the shortest players have to play setter.'

    The club is made up of players from around the entire regional area. Sis-13 reports 3 of the girls are from the same junior high about 25 miles away; nobody else knows each other. The coach has never coached any of them before.

    So now she is moved to the new position of outside hitter. Although she is quite fast and can jump well, at 5-2 she simply cannot reach to the top of the net (regulation HS girls height) so she is utterly ineffective in the frontline.

    Season's first tournament was Saturday. This tournament was explained to everybody to be an 'exhibition'/ 'preseason' type thing; basically a get acquainted exercise for everybody.

    Mom, StarSis, drops Sis-13 off at the tourney at 8:15 a.m. then heads back to another elementary school where she has to coach her basketball team, the PowerPandas, with twins Sis A and Sis B, in their game at 9:15 (synopsis in separate thread).

    After the basketball game, StarSis with Sises A&B in tow, arrive at the volleyball tournament site at about 11:00 to find action two matches into pool play. "We" are 0-2, losing the first two matches 25-9, 25-13 and 25-11, 25-6. Sis-13 reports she has played a total of 8 points.

    Things do not get better as the day goes on. "We" go 0-4 in pool play and 0-2 in elimination tournament action, with a total game record of about 3-12. Sis-13 plays as a front-line sub for the pool play matches, rarely getting a hand on the ball and never getting to serve (one of her strong points with her school team). NewCoach tends to insert subs for only 2-3 points at a time max.

    At the end of pool play, we lose the final game 25-12, making our final pool game record 2-6. During the 2 minutes allowed for switchover, NewCoach indulges her inner Herb Brooks and orders the whole team to the baseline to do suicides. In full view of the whole crowd. Except for the previous starting setter, who has been ordered off to the side of the court to do pushups while the rest of the team runs.

    Looking down the sideline at some of the other team parents, we can see teeth grinding and smoke coming out of many ears.

    The fiery motivational ploy works about as spectacularly well as you might expect; we lose the first game of the double-elimination round 25-3.

    Now facing elimination, NewCoach informs the girls "it is time to get serious now" and ''screwing-around time is over." In the next game, Sis-13 is inserted in the lineup and plays most of the game, and we win 25-19. The opponents appear to have cleared their bench and are playing a lineup of almost all players under 5-foot-4. But still, a win is a win.

    Sis-13 plays most of the way (mostly at setter) the next match, which we lose 25-19 and 25-21. Thankfully that puts us out of our misery for the day, at about 4:30 p.m.; the tourney organizers tell us if we won our way back to the title match, we'd be there until about 7-8 p.m.

    After the knockout loss, NewCoach calls the team into the locker room (actually half the women's bathroom) and chews them out for about 20 minutes while the parents wait outside, with EVERYONE now flaming and fuming.

    Throughout the day, StarSis (and her hubby) and I have been exchanging numerous eyebrow-raising glances, especially at the suicides episodes. Even the 9-year-old twins were asking, "What is the coach yelling at them during the time-out for?" But we never utter even a discouraging word out loud.

    Everyone drives back to the StarSis household (I'm in my own car while Sis and Hubby truck the kids back). When we get home, Sis-13 runs upstairs to shower and change; she's up there an hour.

    StarSis informs me that Sis-13 barely said a single word the whole way back.

    While Sis-13 is still upstairs showering, StarSis says, "I'm not going to be the ringleader of the parents' rebellion, but I can tell you right now there is already one brewing." Apparently there were a lot of snarky and snotty comments at the moms' team food table.

    Sis says she is ESPECIALLY not going to volunteer the fact that she herself used to be quite a good player in HS. I agree quickly. "Going in to bitch about the coach and saying 'I used to be a pretty good player myself' is a real good way to instantly get appointed as a volunteer assistant coach yourself."

    It's gonna be a LOOOONG season. This week is probably going to be the worst; the school basketball team Sis-13 quit to play club volleyball starts its season. Pretty much all of her school friends play on the team.

    It's theoretically possible she could play on both teams at the same time, but the volleyball team practices twice a week and has tournaments most weekends, while basketball usually has three days of action a week too.

    Her grades have been teetering about at the B-plus/B-minus range, and Mom StarSis says two entire team schedules would be too much for everyone to handle.

    Plus, they have $400 in non-refundable fees sunk into the volleyball club team, and their policy is clear; players are penalized in PT for missing practices or games.

    StarSis said they already had it out a couple months ago after the initial tryout; basically, there will be no turning back unless club volleyball turns into an utter nightmare scenario. Let's just say Tourney #1 was quite a disturbing daydream.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2015
  3. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    Sounds like the coach is a Bo Pelini deciple. She also is clueless. Whoever sets the ball the best should be the setter, doesn't matter their height. In fact, as your kid gets older, the taller the better for the setter because they can help out as blockers. Shorter players are backrow or libero. I'll tell you this, don't complain about the coach yelling at the players. It doesn't help.
     
  4. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    StarSis is about 5-3, her hubby is 5-9. Sis-13 isn't growing tall enough to play frontline at a Class A high school, where she's going. She is going to be a setter or libero. (They weren't using a libero Saturday.)

    The coach yelling at the players isn't that big a deal, except virtually none of the other dozen or so teams in the tourney seemed to be doing it. And it seems pretty stupid to blow your rhetorical/dramatic fuse in what was clearly posted as a 'scrimmage/preseason' tournament by the club directors. The players had only practiced together about 6 hours -- not much time to develop that ironclad team unity. Once you pull shit like the running suicides/courtside pushups stuff, the players know you have to resort to stunts.
     
  5. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    My daughter's deal is way the hell more professional that what your niece is involved with, Starman. Then again, it better be, as $850 for the season is as low-ball as you can go (my daughter's deal is about $1,900). Her coaches are young (mid-20s), but they both were scholarship D1 players, and they're overseen by the owners of the facility/club. This is a pretty big business, and it has plenty of competition around the area. I noticed (I think) a bit of her coaches' "professionalism" this weekend a couple of times with quirky calls. Some of the other coaches got bent out of shape on such things, but her coaches were all about the next point. "Don't get mad, get ready," seemed to be their mantra. I saw the same thing with other teams from the big clubs.

    And, just one comment about volleyball: How fucked up is this rule that the libero can't start the game ... but can be subbed in before the very first point? Isn't that, by definition, starting the game?
     
  6. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    Big business, hell yes!! Parents sitting around the camp one day started some mental arithmetic -- number of teams, average number of girls per team, the cost of the "tuition." Came up with more than $1 million in income. Of course, the owner has expenses. Lease and maintenance of the shithole warehouse, equipment, tournament entry fees, coaches pay, etc. I started singing the song from "Gigi" -- Thank Heaven ... for little girls ...
     
  7. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Sis-13's team played their second tournament of the season Saturday, and overall the experience improved from a solid F all the way up to, oh, about a C-minus/D-plus.
    Sis-13 is getting a bit more PT, but still not at setter; the team, which was completely futile two weeks ago, has improved up to somewhat-below-average, going 2-3-1 in pool play and then finishing 5th in their 8-team playoff bracket.
    The coach now seems to know most players' names, In itself an improvement over the first weekend.

    But she's doubled down on the "make the team run suicides in the middle of the tourney" motivational ploy -- this time, she pulled it twice.
     
  8. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    DaughterQuant's team is in the midst of its second tournament this weekend, and results have, so far, been similar to the first. Her pool consisted of one very good team, two OK teams (one of which is hers), and a thoroughly outclassed team. But for maybe two players, DaughterQuant's team can play with the best of them, but against a good team, back-line weaknesses (mainly a couple of girls' inability to minimally handle a good serve) inevitably lead to long stretches of lost points.

    These tournaments are pretty much open affairs, so you have substantial variation in the "level" of the teams. For example, DaughterQuant's club had four teams in this particular 13U tournament -- two so-called "regional" teams, a "national" team and an "elite" team. DaughterQuant is on one of the regional teams, but the really good team in her bracket was another club's "national" team.

    DaughterQuant played well yesterday -- she subs in for the libero then plays through four rotations (including a serve) -- but lost control of her serve in the early matches. When she's serving, her team's front line is at its weakest, so she has to really serve well for her team to have a good chance at getting the point. In the first set of the first match (against the really good team), she got an OK one in but her team lost the point. In later opportunities, she seemed to be pressing and wound up spraying one or two wide and another one long. I think this gets in her head a little more than normal because, unlike most of the other girls, she serves and then heads to the sidelines. So if she misses, she gets to think long and hard about it.

    Anyway, in the first set of the third match, against the fairly weak team, she served again. As she trotted back with the ball, the look on her face just broke my heart. Like many of us who are or were in the sports business, I've seen plenty of athletes staring into the abyss, and she had that look. I don't know that I've ever see her so ... frightened. She went through a much-longer-than-usual pre-serve routine, and I thought, "Oh boy, this ain't gonna be good."

    But she did it. She guided one in, her team got the point, and then she relaxed and got four or five more good ones in, including a couple of aces. As she bounced off the court, you could tell a huge weight had been lifted.

    I was happy for her, but I have to be honest ... as much as I enjoyed her doing well there at the end, I keep seeing that look on her face there before she turned it around. I'm not so sure I'm breaking even here.
     
  9. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    Thanks for the update. Love volleyball. When my kid first started club, I spent hours on the organization's website trying to figure out seedings, rankings, etc. (i.e.: does it better your ranking if you win your match 25-10, 25-10, than 25-20, 25-20.), and was proud when our team was 150th out of 330 or so in her age group. I'm sure I'm the only one who cared. In high school, I tried to figure out the standings. It was hard when she was on frosh-soph and JV. Before some of the matches I'd try to find a parent or coach from the other team and ask them how they did in their previous couple matches. Most times they didn't know or couldn't remember.
     
  10. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    That sounds like more than breaking even. It sounds like the cliche come true about what we really all want our kids to gain from sports. She earned something on her own right there.

    A lot of parents would have ruined that moment -- thinking they were being helpful, they would have been talking to their child all the way through it, not knowing they were only adding to the stress and giving the kid someone or something to lash out at if/when failure happened.

    It's tough to sit on your hands and let it play out. Only way to do it, though.
     
  11. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Brief update/crosspost from the kids hoops thread: Sis-13, who quit basketball to concentrate on club volleyball, seems to be having some second thoughts about the matter.

    It seemed to come to a head Saturday when she watched her former teammates roll to a big win in their season opener. After the game she was out on the court shooting around with the rest of the players.

    After the unmitigated disaster of Week 1 and the mid-range results from Week 2, she seemed to have shaken off doubts about volleyball and appeared to be all-in for the season and fairly upbeat after last week. But the team has a big holiday weekend tournament coming up this weekend, and she was very noncomittal Saturday night about what her schedule was going to be and said "my next tourney isn't for like 3 weeks."

    The StarSis family is heading to an uncle's cottage up north for a 3-day weekend on Friday night, but they aren't particularly doing anything; it's just a family campfire weekend. Two other of my Star sibs live in town (i.e., Sis-13's uncle and aunt) and could be pressed into service for rides home from the tournament and even to stay overnight if needed as chaperones (she's never been a 'problem child,' but she is starting to pick up some of that mid-teen sass, and she has discovered boys, so no way in hell are Sis and hubby going to allow her to stay home on her own, but there are aunts and uncles avaliable to keep tabs on things).

    So there's no particular family-obligation reason why she couldn't stay home and play in the volleyball tournament.

    Anyway, StarSis and hubby have sunk several hundred bucks into the club team already, and she told me that there will definitely be a huge hullabaloo if Sis-13 starts talking about quitting volleyball, especially after only 2 weeks of a 10-week season.

    StarSis has been pretty firm that she will not be allowed to do both; if she tried it, she would have some kind of sports event (practice or game) literally six days a week from now until April, and more than a few weekend dates with games in both sports.

    Apparently there has been at least some talk about it; StarSis has found out if Sis-13 wants to (re) join the St. Sissy hoops team, she would probably play only mopup minutes (if that) for the first couple weeks since she'd have missed all the preseason practices. Plus they would have to pay the full pay-to-play fee for joining the team (another $100).

    It seemed to be a subject nobody wanted to talk about Saturday night, so I'll just have to stand by and see what happens.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2015
  12. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    Saturday was an all-day tournament, with pool play beginning at 8 a.m. DaughterQuant's team was seeded second in a four-team pool -- I didn't realize until this tournament that pools actually are seeded -- and dominated the two lower seeds before matching up with the top seed. In pool play, each match is really just two sets, and where you finish in the pool depends first on sets won/lost and second on point differential. Neither DaughterQuant's team nor the top seed had lost a set, but DaughterQuant's team led in points differential by 10 points. So, when DaughterQuant's team won the first set 25-15, unless something really screwy happened they were going to be the No. 1 team coming out of the pool. So, of course, in the second set the other team ran out to a huge early lead. Our girls hung in there, though, and got on enough mini-rolls to finally take the lead at 16-15 before closing out the set 25-21.

    In bracket play, by finishing first in their pool, DaughterQuant's team had a first-round bye. They won the first set rather handily but lost 25-22 in the second set. In the tiebreaker, they quickly built up a 9-2 lead but, to their credit, the opposition didn't fold. Soon it was 9-5, then 10-7, then 11-10. Then, with the score tied at 12, one of those terrible matchups happened. The opposition had a left-handed girl serving, and DaughterQuant's team had its absolutely weakest back line out there. Just like that, here came three straight unreturned serves and there it went.

    One of the things that's really exhausting about these tournaments is that teams rotate through turns officiating other matches. The head referee (or umpire, whatever he/she is called) isn't part of a team, but the off referee (the one who stands on the floor at the net) will be a coach, and the back-line judges and scorers/bookkeepers will be players. You have to have gone through training to be a bookkeeper, and DaughterQuant is the only girl on her team who's had that training. So, this is how her morning went ... Score/Play/Off/Play/Score/Play. After pool play was over, she got half an hour break, then she had to score the first match of the bracket. She was barely done before she had to warm up for her team's bracket match. Then, when they'd lost (and should have been free to go), their coach was told that the scheduled officiating team (loser of an earlier-bracket match) had taken off, so they'd have to officiate one more time.

    Even with all of that, by far it was DaughterQuant's best day of play. Last week she adjusted her serve (she went from two steps to one) and Saturday she had several runs of 5 and 6 very good serves. More than that, however, she had several legit blocks for points and a number of very good kills. She's starting to be able to pick a kill angle (I don't know what the term is) at the last possible moment, so her kills are becoming much more effective. It's kind of like a tennis player who can hold the shot until the opposition has committed to a side. She keeps that up and I am going to start letting delusions of her maybe playing in high school enter my head.
     
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