TEACHING THE GAME Secrets of a volley mom
Longtime high school coach Laurie Glass, the mother of U.S. Women’s National Volleyball Team setter Alisha Glass, offers interesting insights into how volleyball parents can advise junior players without being intrusive and navigate the stressful college recruiting process.
By Jennifer Armson-Dyer
arenting is one of those jobs you’ll rarely get credit for. Coaching is an- other. But the world’s a little different when you’re both a parent and a coach. Laurie Glass, a longtime coach at Leland (Mich.) High School, has been able to use her coach- ing life to aid her parenting skills, which has come in handy since her daughter is Alisha Glass, a U.S. team setter who won three NCAA Championships at Penn State. “Having seen parenting from the coaching side, that’s helped me be more aware of being a parent myself,” Laurie said. “I’ve seen all kinds of parenting over the years as a coach, and that has given me the best perspective on how to behave as a parent.”
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Alisha and Laurie Glass see things clearly when it comes to volleyball.
Alisha grew up in the gym and picked up both the skills and concepts at an early age. She had a successful scholastic career, and she was ahead of her peers in volleyball. At 12, she was the starting setter for her local club 18s team. She was an accomplished hitter in high school, but earned Best Setter at the 2005 USA Volleyball High Performance Cham- pionships after she led the USA Red squad to a gold medal. It was during the recruiting process that Laurie’s coaching and parenting skills were really put to the test. “Alisha is a people person,” Laurie said.
“What’s going to matter to her is going to be the people in the program rather than the stuff. It was important for her to hear what people were really saying. (Penn State head coach) Russ (Rose) tells it like it is. That became apparent in a gathering after a match when he said out loud to a bunch of people: ‘That’s the worst Penn State effort I’ve ever seen.’ I turned to Alisha and said, ‘Just so you know, that’s what he’s saying in public. So clearly you should know that he’s not going to pull any punches in any direction.’ It was important that she felt like she belonged there. Coaches recruit a certain kind of kid, and there’s a vibe and feel for that atmosphere, and she needed to know that and feel that.” Because Laurie was Alisha’s high school coach, college coaches were allowed to talk to Laurie at any time. That gave her insight into choosing a college program.
“It was interesting to watch the maneuver- ing and what gets said and doesn’t get said,” Laurie said. “Something I tell people is that if you don’t know, ask. Wouldn’t you rather know up front what’s going on rather than
5 tips from one volleyball parent to another
• If you don’t know, ask.
Always ask a question, even if you’re afraid of the answer. You need to know upfront, clearly, what’s going on.
• Don’t become part of the struggle or part of your child’s misery.
Respond to their struggles and help them handle it, but don’t rescue them.
• Keep your child grounded in reality. Kids sometimes become too entrenched in volleyball. They (and you!) need to realize there’s a bigger world out there.
• Don’t live through your kids. Your child shouldn’t feel pressure be- cause of what you want them to do.
• Don’t miss a moment. Enjoy the moments you have, even
if they’re not ideal, because sooner or later they’re going to be fewer and farther between.
being afraid? It’s OK to say, ‘I would like to know where I am on your depth chart’ or ‘how do you see her fitting in in the long run?’ People would say to me ‘She’s the best, and if I got her I would let these other people go.’ I would say to myself, ‘So she’s the one you’re telling the truth to; you’re just lying to these other people. But Alisha is getting the real truth. And you just clearly admitted to me that you’re lying to other people. So I should pay attention to that, because if you can lie to them, you can lie to her.’”
Certainly part of parenting is comforting and consoling your child during hard times, but Laurie made a concerted effort not to
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talk to Alisha every day during her collegiate career.
“When you’re enmeshed in your child’s life through high school, you get to see it all. When they go away, part of you likes the daily conversation because it keeps you in the loop. But at the same time, when they’re crashing or down, you don’t get the uplifting part, you just get the crash. They don’t call you two hours later to tell you they feel better. I learned very quickly that we shouldn’t talk every day. She could call me when she needed me, otherwise we would talk every Sunday about all of the ups and downs.
“What I’ve found is that you can’t join your child in their misery. You need to give them the tools to handle misery. You don’t want to say, ‘Yeah, I agree your coach is horrible and doesn’t know what he or she is doing.’ Instead, you want to say, ‘Wow, that must have been tough, did you talk to him or her about that?’ Or ‘What are you going to do to prepare for this again?’ As a parent, your heart is breaking on the inside, but your heart break- ing isn’t helping your child. You can’t always rescue your child, and rescuing them isn’t going to help them the next time they’re faced with the situation.”
One of the most important things that Lau- rie has found is that many athletes and parents get caught up in the volleyball world and lose track of the bigger picture.
“Sometimes they feel like the success or failure that they experience on the court de- termines how their family or friends are going to react,” said Laurie. “We tell Alisha (who is currently playing professionally overseas) that we want you to do well, but if you decide to- morrow that you don’t want to play volleyball anymore, we’re going to love you regardless. We want you to be happy and doing what you want to do. Right now it happens to be volley- ball, but if it weren’t volleyball, we wouldn’t care. We’re not living our lives vicariously through you. I’m more proud of who Alisha is as a human being than I am of her as a vol- leyball player.”
Jennifer Armson-Dyer is the director of operations for the Badger Region Vol- leyball Association. She played at North- western University and was the assistant sports information director at Penn State University for both women’ volleyball.
s and men’ s
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