options for practice sites. We were also able to utilize some of the area private schools as there weren’t as many school activities to work around and they were much easier to work with.
Coaches are another important consideration.
You will need to find competent individuals who are willing to give of their time and talents. Coaching USAV junior club volleyball takes a lot of time and you must be willing to give up weekends during the season. I would suggest starting with the local col- lege, high school and middle school coaches. Adults who are still playing competitive volleyball or have a background in volleyball are another resource. Now that our club has been in existence for awhile, we are able to get some of our former players to come back and coach. Regardless, each coach must be a member of their USAV Region and must have undergone a USAV Background Screening and have attended an IMPACT Clinic to obtain that minimal training and certification, all of which have associated costs. You also must determine if you are going to com- pensate your coaches, and if so, how much. Will it be a certain amount for each practice/tournament, a sti- pend or something else? Whatever you decide to pay the coaches must be factored into the overall cost. Once I determined the budget I was then able to turn my attention to finding players to field a team. Since I coached high school volleyball, I was only allowed to have five players on my USAV junior club team due to North Carolina High School Athletic As- sociation rules. I would also have to ensure that I had help during the off-season blackout or “dead” periods as I wouldn’t be able to coach the team. Some high school athletic associations have restrictive rules gov- erning off-season teams and others do not. Coming from Pennsylvania I was not used to such restrictive off-season rules so that was a huge change for me. At the initial meeting I had approximately a dozen players and parents represented. In the end I was able to get enough players to field a team the first year. We had to play in the 17-and-under division, al- though our team was comprised of freshmen through seniors. We had a very diverse range of skills, which was a challenge at times, but the important thing was that we were able to field a team. We won more than we lost, but more important than our results was giv- ing each player the chance to improve their skills and in turn improve the level of play on their high school teams.
I learned a great deal the first year of the program and continue to learn as I direct the program each season. As the club grew it was imperative that I found good coaches and surrounded myself with responsible and competent people to whom I could delegate things such as travel arrangements, uni- forms, food, etc. The most important thing for me to remember is that we are doing this for the kids – whether their goal is to improve their skills or to have the opportunity to play college volleyball. The hours are countless and it is more work than I want to think about, but in the end I wouldn’t change any of it so that players in our area are able to play USAV junior club volleyball.
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