Make It Make Sense
College commitment season is an interesting time of the year. A 17-year-old kid sits behind a table with three hats, reaches for Alabama, fakes everybody out, grabs Oregon, Mom starts crying, Dad puts on the matching hat, and within six months the whole thing can be over because apparently the offensive coordinator left and the new guy doesn’t believe in throwing the football.
A few years later, he’ll make it to the NFL, sign a four-year contract and possibly request a trade before the introductory press conference makes it to YouTube. The team might trade him. The coach might get fired. The general manager might decide everybody needs a fresh start. This is sports.
We understand that things change right up until we walk into a club volleyball gym. Somewhere between Court 6 and a folding table selling $38 tournament T-shirts, we apparently decided that accepting a roster spot is forever.
Your kid has three tryouts, two callbacks, and an offer that expires sometime between leaving the gym and reaching the first traffic light. Half the roster is still being assembled, you’re trying to figure out who the coach is, somebody heard one girl is leaving, somebody else swears she’s staying, and before you’ve successfully gathered a single piece of reliable information, an email arrives congratulating you on your new financial commitment.
So you panic and start calling people who know absolutely nothing and asking what they’ve heard. You study twelve-year-olds like you’re analyzing an NBA Draft board. Who made 1s? Who got offered 2s? Wait, she went there? I thought she was staying. Did they already fill outside? How many setters are they carrying?
Nobody knows anything, yet everybody knows everything. And by the end of the night, you’ve somehow spoken to nine parents, three of whom heard their information from each other, and you’re now more confused than you were when you left the gym.
Then you talk to the Director and hear that this season will be different. There’s going to be more development, a new coaching structure, more attention, more opportunity, and you start thinking about all those little things that bothered you before and wondering if maybe this fixes them.
You ask for the roster because apparently you’re the only person who thinks knowing who’s actually on the team might be useful before committing to an entire season. You still don’t get it, but somewhere between the offer expiring and everybody else making decisions, you sign anyway.
A few days later, the phone rings and there’s another opportunity. Not just another team. The kind of opportunity you were hoping for in the first place. But you already committed, so you say no. You hang up the phone, probably feel pretty good about yourself for five minutes, and keep it moving. Then they call back and ask if you’re sure.
Now you’re sitting there thinking about a decision you thought you had already made, except this time you’re thinking about the last three months too. You’re thinking about the tournament where the team gave up 20 straight points because nobody could return a serve and how you just knew the next practice was going to be three straight hours of serve receive and it wasn’t.
You’re thinking about the shared court, the practices where both coaches weren’t there, the times you quietly wondered whether anybody was actually getting better, and the roster you’ve asked to see three times that apparently lives somewhere next to the nuclear codes.
And now the exact opportunity you were hoping for is sitting there asking one more time.
Are you sure?
So at the 25th hour, you change your mind. You figure the deposit is gone, somebody is going to be pissed, and there may be a few awkward hellos at volleyball tournaments for the foreseeable future. But for the first time in a few days, the decision actually feels right.
Then you find out you still owe for the entire season.
At first, you assume there has to be some misunderstanding. The season hasn’t started, your kid hasn’t practiced, you’ve already lost the deposit, and the roster wasn’t even finished when you committed. Now that you’re leaving, somebody else can take the spot. Maybe they already have. But apparently none of that has anything to do with you because you still owe the money.
This is when you start wondering whether youth sports needs a players’ union. I know they’re children, but hear me out because somewhere along the way these club directors became general managers, commissioners, owners and occasionally low-level mob bosses, while the parents remained whatever you call the people who just keep sending Zelle payments.
The whole arrangement is fascinating when you really think about it. You have 24 hours to make a decision about a team that might not have a completed roster yet, based on conversations about a season that hasn’t happened, with coaches you may not always be able to reach, and somehow you’re the only person in the relationship being asked to guarantee anything.
That’s a hell of a business model, especially when the spot doesn’t disappear with your kid because somebody else takes it. Now I’m no accountant, but at some point I do start wondering how many times we’re allowed to sell the same seat on the plane.
Because that’s the part nobody really talks about. Most families aren’t sitting around with an extra season of club volleyball money buried in the backyard. The reason you’re on a payment plan in the first place is because paying for the actual season was already going to be a stretch. Now imagine somebody telling you that you still have to make those payments while your kid is playing somewhere else, and there’s another kid standing in the spot you supposedly still owe money for.
You start asking questions you never thought you’d be asking about youth volleyball, starting with whether any of this is even legal. Apparently, contracts are contracts, so okay, but then where is everybody else? Where is the commissioner of 13U volleyball? Where is Congress? Where is Adam Silver when you need him? I’ve watched the federal government hold hearings over college football. Meanwhile, parents are roaming convention centers every summer signing agreements that apparently have the strength of the Treaty of Versailles.
And the craziest part is how much faith is required from only one side.
You’re told about development. You’re told about the plan. You’re told how the team is going to work. You ask for updates and sometimes hear nothing. You try to talk to a coach during a tournament and that’s not the time. You send a text afterward and apparently that’s not the time either. Eventually you start wondering when exactly the time is, but your payment date seems to have excellent communication skills.
Then you decide to leave and suddenly everybody remembers exactly how important your kid was. Now you’re hearing that the team was built around her, which is interesting because three days ago you couldn’t even find out who else was on it.
This is where youth sports starts feeling less like youth sports and more like Game of Thrones. You came in trying to find a place for your kid to play volleyball and somehow ended up choosing a House. Choose carefully because apparently switching kingdoms is frowned upon.
And God forbid you think you can come back.
That’s the part that still gets me. A family can spend months inside a program, build real relationships, support the club, spend money, show up, do everything they’re supposed to do, and then make one decision about what they believe is best for their kid.
You’d think people who spend their lives working with young athletes would understand that. They don’t have to like the decision, and nobody expects a going-away party, but somewhere between “We’re disappointed to lose you” and “You can never come back,” I start wondering when the volleyball director became Tony Soprano.
And most parents will never say anything because what are you going to do? Your kid still plays in this world. You’ll see these people again. The volleyball community isn’t exactly the population of China. Everybody knows everybody, everybody talks, and nobody wants their kid caught in the middle because Mom or Dad decided to challenge the wrong person.
So you pay, complain privately, tell another parent what happened, and eventually tryout season comes around again. Another family walks into the same gym, gets the same 24-hour deadline, hears the same promises and signs the same agreement without knowing any of this happened. And somewhere, another folding table is selling a $38 T-shirt.
Now that I think about it, youth sports really might need a players’ union.
I’ll come back to that.
