How Your Volleyball Club Can Affect Your Recruiting

If you are considering playing for a volleyball club or signing up your child to play for a volleyball club, there are always common questions that you will consider. One is whether the cost of playing club volleyball is worth it. Another is whether it will really affect your recruiting.

Playing club volleyball can definitely have an effect on your recruiting. Choosing the right club can make all the difference by giving you more focused training, more options through coaching relationships, and more tournament exposure.

While playing club volleyball doesn’t guarantee you to get recruited or for your player to get a scholarship offer, it is setting them up with better potential.

Do You Have to Join a Volleyball Club to Get Recruited?

You don’t have to play club volleyball to get recruited, there are players every year that get recruited and get scholarships to play at the college level who did not play club volleyball. But, it can be a great help that opens up more options for you as a player and improves your chances and your choices. In volleyball, over 90% of college players played for a club during their high school years.

The choice to play club volleyball is like travel ball in other sports, it’s an extra season for players who are serious and want to make the most of their time to grow into the best player and compete on the highest level that they can. Club tournaments expose players to all kinds of teams from all over the country and that experience can really shape them over time.

Another aspect of club volleyball is that your game experience is all in a tournament setting. This is much different than a typical high school season where teams compete with just 1 match per meeting. Once in a while, your team may do what’s called a tri-match, and then if your team is good enough to play in the playoffs you may have that experience.

Playing club is a great way to grow as a player because you may have experiences where you play quite a few matches in a very short time. My daughter had days where she played 6 matches in 1 day. Some tournaments run 3 days long with multiple tiers.

A standard club tournament will have 2-3 matches on day 1 and 2+ games on day 2 depending on how many teams are in your division and bracket and how far you make it without losing. These experiences can develop stronger stamina and better overall fitness level for players when they’re being pushed beyond what they realized they could do.

How Important Is the Volleyball Club That You Join?

Joining the right club can be very helpful in your recruiting for a few different reasons:

1. A Volleyball Club That Pushes You To Develop As a Player Increases Your Options

Especially earlier in your volleyball journey, you want to try to find a club that’s going to push you and equip you to become the best player that you can be. Reaching your full potential is really the best way for you to get recruited to your top choices of college programs.

When you’re choosing a club, consider the coaches they have in their system. Look for a club that has many coaches with a strong history of coaching, and especially coaches that have successfully coached players that play your particular position. Many times student-athletes playing for their high school get limited coaching for their position because they only have 1 coach, or maybe 1 coach and 1 assistant. With a club, you should gain access to many coaches and get more specific training for your role on the team.

I remember the first day my daughter Heidie came home from practice at a new club she joined one season and said, “Dad, I learned more about being a setter today than I’ve learned in the last 5 years!” She had a practice with a coach who had played setter all the way through her volleyball career and she had completely opened her eyes. Heidie’s coach at school was a great coach, but she was a hitter, so the depth of coaching she could give setters was from an outsider looking in.

2. A Volleyball Club With Connections To Colleges Increases Your Exposure

Some clubs really excel at making connections with good, strong college programs and are able to feed their players into college programs that are a good fit. Depending on the athletic skills of the player, the needs of the team, and the other characteristics of the school that the player is looking for, you may need a lot of contacts to find the right spot for you.

Clubs that have a long history and a wide range of coaches who’ve played for many different schools can be a huge asset. While some clubs may be ultra-competitive, if all of their coaches come from the same handful of schools, that could really limit their ability to help you find a school where you fit in.

So as you’re trying out for a club, ask questions and keep your ears open. Ask different coaches where they played during their college years or where they’ve coached in the past. You want to notice how many of those answers include schools you are interested in, or at least that there are a lot of different schools being mentioned.

3. A Volleyball Club With A Track Record of Helping Players Get Scholarships Shows Their Focus

This is a question parents are usually too shy to ask, but really should: “How many players from your club got offered a scholarship this past season?” Or if you prefer, “Over the history of your club, in an average year, how many players get offered scholarships to play volleyball?”

This can be super uncomfortable to ask, but don’t you want to know? If you ask this from each of the clubs your athlete is trying out for, you’ll learn some valuable information. In some cases, a particular coach or staff member may not know the answer, and that’s understandable. But the club should know and they should be able to give you a straight answer. If a club truly doesn’t know, that tells you how important it is to them.

If they haven’t had recent success getting players recruited that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider the club, but it is a red flag. Some clubs are just out there filling up teams of kids who just enjoy playing and are willing to pay and they may not be as competitive as you would like.

Have you seen our Complete Guide to Volleyball Recruiting?

How Important Is It That My Club Team is a Winning team?

Of course, it’s always better if you are playing on a winning team than if you’re not. But club volleyball is still beneficial, even if your team is not that competitive.

Your goal should be to play for the best team at the highest level that you can. If you have the option to “play up” or to play for higher tier club levels like “Power” or “Elite”, take the opportunity.

It makes a great impression with college coaches to see that you’re playing against great competition. When you’re destroying easy teams, it’s hard for them to know exactly how well you’ll fit in at the next level. They want to see how you compete through adversity and with direct competition.

Why Don’t College Coaches Come to High School Games?

The biggest reason you almost never see college coaches at high school games is because of the way the seasons line up. College coaches are usually in the middle of their season while you are playing yours.

Unless you are very close geographically and they have time available, you’ll probably never get them to come and watch your school games. You can certainly invite them, coaches like to hear if you’re playing in tournaments or playoffs anyway, but don’t be discouraged when they don’t come.

One rare opportunity is if they have one of their own children playing in high school. You may be able to identify a time and place where they would already be present (especially in a tournament setting), and if you let them know ahead of time, they may take the time to come and meet you and see you play.

Can You Play For Both Your School Volleyball Team and a Club Volleyball Team?

Absolutely! You can and should play for both your school team and a club team if at all possible. This gives you the most experience from a wider range of coaches to learn from.

The club season is purposely scheduled during the off-season from your school program so that you can play with little or no conflict. Most high school coaches will encourage their players to play for a club in the off-season because they know keeping their athletes growing throughout the year will pay off long-term.

In some states, it’s possible that your coach from school will actually coach your club team as well. Where I live, in Alabama, it’s against the rules, so your coach could coach for the same club that you play for, but they couldn’t coach their own school players.

If you’re looking to begin your recruiting journey…

Resources:

https://www.ncsasports.org/recruiting/how-to-get-recruited/club-sports