Volleyball Coaching Life-Specialization

I had the good fortune of having one of the junior players from my club in Saint Louis reach out to me. We had a frank discussion on Facebook and on Messenger about the state of junior volleyball, as she saw it. I promised her I would address some of her concerns and thoughts.

 A little background first. She was one of many talented players on a very loaded team. She played for us as a junior and a senior and we did very well in the GJNC. She ended up being a two-sport athlete at a Power 5 conference school; she participated in both volleyball and track, she was a hell of a high jumper, which obviously spoke to her hops in volleyball. Her chosen path was very challenging physically and mentally. While she had stellar collegiate careers in both sports, she felt she had better success at volleyball than she did at track, and she admits that she favored volleyball with in college. I also remember her telling me that she was in a constant state of fatigue and pain, because when she's in season with volleyball, she's in the offseason with track, and then when she's in the offseason with volleyball, she's in season with track. She experienced double duty year-round throughout her four years in college.

 She graduated from the university, did the adult thing: got a job, got married, and had three kids. She didn’t start to get back to playing volleyball until quite a few years later because she said: “that was how long it took for my body to recover”, she was playing sand instead of indoor ball,

 Now, twenty years later, she is looking at the sport of volleyball as the doting mother for her children, because she wants her children to love the sport as she did when she was younger; because she wanted her children to learn from the same experiences that she had so loved as a teen. At the same time as she was telling me her desires for her children, she is telling me about how horrified she is by what she had learned about the evolution of junior sports, and junior volleyball specifically.

 It is interesting to hear her perspective, because she had been away from the junior volleyball scene for about 20 years. Junior volleyball has evolved to a completely different animal, so much so that she doesn't recognize much of it, although the sport had not changed so drastically.

 During those same 20 years, I experienced the evolution firsthand but from a less compressed point of view than hers, the time variable was not a consideration as I watched junior volleyball evolve as my life was evolving; because of that, I didn't notice how drastic the changes have been, at least not enough to be alarmed. It wasn’t until I started to look back on it from her perspective as well as my own self-limited coaching time as I had stepped away from coaching club ball in the last two or three years, that I see the evolution.

 The following is a transcript of our conversations on Messenger. I edited some of it for readability, correcting some grammar and spelling mistakes, and made it clearer, I hope. Any misinterpretation is my fault.

I did both Volleyball and Track, which are not a very common combination of  two sports in college. Volleyball and track are very comparable to each other and different seasons (fall versus spring). In high school I did volleyball, basketball, and track and by my junior year, I quit basketball because of club volleyball. I find myself completely saddened by how athletics have changed. Some things might be better, but a lot are so sad. Kids at a very young age choose their one sport and stick to it. You don’t find many multiple sport athletes. Or clubs allowing other sports to occur. Now having children of my own, I want to allow them to do many sports.

 

….the same body repetition leads to early injuries, and not to mention burnout. Some clubs like travel soccer don’t allow the athletes to even play on their high school team, it is 100% club or nothing. It’s just sad to me. I was a well-rounded athlete in multiple sports, I just wish it wasn’t about the money but now it truly is. Not only the clubs making money, but now it’s the college athletes making money, which is even more of a driver to being a one sport athlete. All around sad.

It’s a tough topic. I see both sides. Specializing in a sport and being the best in that sport versus being a well-rounded athlete. I was great at both sports, but I couldn’t give track a fair enough shot while doing volleyball. So, parts of me wishes I did pick one or the other. Multiple sport athletes are well rounded and help with overuse and repetition. But now with players being able to make money as soon as they get into college. It makes you want to specialize, but I feel like the sport is changing and makes me sad. I would have loved the portal to transfer, and I probably would have, but I chose the university I chose so I could do both sports which many other schools had said no to. There are so many variables and factors. Just makes me sad for my kids playing sports now. Where is the love for the game instead of the business/money aspect?

It is, indeed, a very tough question. Even though her perspective is not surprising for those dinosaurs like myself who have been around club volleyball for so many decades, I believe the most recent changes are the most salient. Club sports for juniors in general has burgeoned to the point where specialization and year-round sports seasons have become seemingly inevitable, even as many clubs and club  coaches are diligently repeating the mantra of the value of the multi-sport athletic experience, especially for the young players starting in sports; yet many are also lamenting the fact that they don’t have the athletes full time for volleyball training because of their other interests. Indeed, many clubs are leveraging the year-round volleyball experience for increased revenue opportunities. High schools are also jumping into the fray, not wanting to lose ground to the clubs. The result is not just year-round volleyball but multiple periods of overlapping athletic activities, which can lead to harm, physically and mentally.

In many ways, we are victims of our own success. As more players are aspiring to move onto the collegiate stage, the rush to recruitment has made the large convention center tournaments and college showcases the norm. In the earlier days, clubs and coaches, in an effort to entice the parents and families to spend more money, evolved the central purpose of club volleyball from skill development to college recruitment. A narrative was evolved to convince everyone involved that the larger, and longer club experience was the only way to ensure that the players ended up playing in college, dangling that college scholarship as the carrot.

As it turns out, the clubs were preaching to the choir. No one needed to try very hard to convince the parents. Even though, a simple calculation would show that the investment made in junior sports development  is better spent being invested in college funds; a more stable and better outcome than hoping for a scholarship. Even with the numbers staring them in the face, many parents eagerly invest in their progeny’s success in sports with the college scholarships as the center of the attraction.

But that couldn’t explain the number of families  paying for club sports. While many parents are realistic about their progeny’s potential as a college athlete, they see many other reasons for participating in club sports; all the traditional reasons: teamwork, ability to work with others, the sheer satisfaction of accomplishing goals, improved confidence, learning about leadership, self-sacrifice for the greater good, etc. But, because the focus and raison d'etre  for club sports has shifted to the scholarship angle, the accepted wisdom has become: play large convention center tournaments; play as many of these tournaments as possible; train players for better tournament  performances, sometimes at the expense of improving their skills; and finally, insisting that the players specialize on one sport at a very early age, before their bodies have fully developed and while dropping all other sports, indeed all other activities.  It is the tail wagging the dog when we compare it to the original purpose of club sports: to improve player skills during their high school off-season in preparation for competing in high school. Even as I am lamenting this evolution, I am not so naïve as to think that we can reverse that trend, the horse is out of the barn, it is too late.  I am also not hypocritical enough to say that I don’t enjoy the large convention center tournaments, they are very useful and exciting. The talent levels does flow towards the correct level, but it has been my experience that it usually take two or more days of play out of the multiple day tournaments for most teams to settle into their level of competition. In the meantime, the top-level teams are not challenged during the first few days, while the lower level teams are getting pounded into oblivion. There is certainly great value in playing better opponents, but the benefit comes from being able to compete against those opponents,. There is no benefit in losing by scoring in the single digits, especially with inexperienced players. The sport suffers because we lose players’ interest.

The positive consequences are that we are getting better players that are excellent advanced players because they are exposed to better competition and are highly trained to compete and win. The negative consequences are that they are coerced into being focused on just one sport, denying themselves opportunities for other sports and other activities. We are creating a general populace of future adults that are less well-rounded, who are hyper focused on one chosen activity and are unable to understand that there is more to being a well-rounded human than being great at one sport or activity.

Unfortunately, most of the junior athletes are stuck on this merry-go-round because they have no choice in the matter, the goals of training are created by adults, adults who are ostensibly motivated by what is best for the athlete. As the state of junior level sports evolves, the emphasis will be on those who are looking for college playing opportunities, which also means more large convention center events and showcases, less single day events or local events. As it is, my clubs’ regional and local level teams are having to scramble to play enough tournaments to fill their desired playing opportunities. The small and local tournaments cannot compete with the big tournaments, so the regional teams have to look forward to playing competitive matches after the first few days.  Coaches and clubs who field regional and local level teams will, more likely than not, subtly apply peer pressure on the players to convince them to specialize at a much earlier point in their lives than before, it is a reflexive move, what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. Increased scheduling conflicts between high schools and clubs drives the schools and clubs to compete for the players’ time, with neither side giving because they are fighting for “their” players. An inevitable result is rising incidences of overuse injury and possibly burnout.

This is why we see so much attrition at the 18 and under level. At this level, many have decided one way or another. The great pipeline that fed the junior sports slows down to a trickle at the  18’s level, which hurts volleyball because there is now a break in the continuum of playing. Those that stop playing at 18 may or may not return to their sports when they go to college, some will just walk away, defeating our intention: growing the volleyball habit into a lifelong sport. It is my impression that the adult membership in the USAV has dropped precipitously in every season that I have been involved with junior volleyball, even as there are large number of  junior players feeding into the system. I don’t have any data about the number of former club players playing in college intramurals, college club teams, or in rec leagues, I would guess that the attrition rate is considerable, i.e. the difference in the junior club membership during the 16’s level, which is the highest number of memberships the last time I checked, and the number of new adult memberships six years hence would be an interesting and imperfect gauge.

In view of the most recent development of large businesses purchasing the large volleyball clubs and plans to host massive convention center tournaments, my imperfect extrapolation is that the interests of the regional and local teams will erode even further, until junior volleyball will become ever more upper rather than just middle class.

Another, more subtle yet persistent message for developing junior players and future human adults is that putting your best effort into any activity is to be the best, whether they are capable of “the best” or not. A commitment to an activity is only validated by becoming the very best, no matter the level of the player’s ability. If the player does not measure up, then they should find something else to invest their time and effort in; it doesn’t matter how they feel about the activity: if you cannot play for the national team then you are wasting your time, try something else. The idea of doing something for the sake of self-improvement, no matter the outcome, is what dies in that persistent and pernicious belief.

There is an often-told story by the author Kurt Vonnegut.

When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you “ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I didn’t play any sport. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something that I will never forget, and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “win” at them.”

What did that story have to do with sports specialization?

I am and was a horrible athlete. I was short, uncoordinated, and overweight. I somehow fell in love with volleyball, I tried to play club volleyball in gradual school. I was the third setter on the second team or the second setter on the third team, I don’t remember. They let me play because I was older and could procure the post-tournament celebratory libations. I played, no matter that I knew I was going to lose and often humiliate myself, but I didn’t care. Most of the people I played with didn’t care, we loved the game and we played. Later, as a means of making myself a better player, I turned to coaching, and I fell in love with coaching volleyball. There is some kind of perverse masochism intrinsic in me that drives me to pedagogy.

While I was evolving as a coach and as a teacher, the experience that I gained through coaching, and the myriad other parts of my multifaceted life has served me well. The cumulative experiences I garnered while just trying things out and performing at not at a very high level has enriched my life. My experiences with volleyball have benefitted my endeavors in other things, and vice versa. It has made me who I am.

In our insistence to service the adult desires in sustaining an economical system called junior volleyball we are influencing junior players to specialize both directly and indirectly. In so doing, we are depriving them of the chance to accumulate experiences that nurture their generalist nature, a nature that is vital for the development of future adult human beings.

In the end, I am not sure if I was able to answer my former player’s concerns about her young children, but I am pleased that she sees the situation, one that she was once a part of, with clear eyes and discerning judgement. I hope that she can successfully navigate the very complicated, ever changing, and turbulent seas of junior volleyball with her children, just as she had in a bygone era.