Things Nobody Told Me About Becoming a Volleyball Mom

A Family Misadventure

How It All Started

It all started with a $50 tryout: six hours of volleyball over three days. As both my boys played, I thought, this was the perfect and affordable childcare for my younger one while his big brother tried out for real.

What I didn’t see coming was that thirty minutes in, a coach offered my eleven-year-old a spot on the green team, while my older one landed his spot on the black team.

And that’s how fifty dollars turned into several thousand, several states, several hotels, and a migraine I’ve come to think of as a family member.

My younger one was extremely proud of himself. He had proven Mama wrong. I’d told him it was just to get some playing time; he’d joked — or so I thought — that he was going to make a team.

I was considerably less proud, but signed him up anyway. After all, we were already going to drive his brother to every tournament. At least this way he’d get to play instead of spending weekends sitting in a gym watching.

Little did we know what we had just done.

AAU at Orlando Convention Center (photos by author)

Welcome to the Universe of Travel Volleyball

The practice schedule

Our club’s travel volleyball organizer does not believe in routine. Some clubs have practice schedules. Not the one we picked, they have monthly surprises. Every month, a new schedule: different days, different times, every week something different. Practices might run 5:30 to 7:20, or 7:30 to 9:20pm on random weeknights. And of course, with two players, some weeks we got four different nights. Then mid-year it shifted to 7:20 to 9:10pm (thanks for the ten minutes to the coaches who actually stopped at that time). And in summer, everything changed again and practices were 5–7pm or 7–9pm. Oh, and did I mention the occasional weekend schedule out of the blue? That was at 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm, or 5pm, on random Saturdays or Sundays.

And because I had two players on two different teams, there were Sundays when we drove to the gym at 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, 7pm, and 9pm, because one practiced from 1–3, the other from 5–7, and the first wanted open gym from 7–9… there went our Sunday. I wish I was exaggerating.

On rare occasions they practiced at the same time in the same gym. This sounds convenient until you discover one court is hidden behind a wall, and of course, one kid would always be on that court behind the wall. Being able to see both of my kids at once would apparently have made life too easy.

Progress

As soon as practices started, we watched them grow, succeed inconsistently, and hit the ball into the net fairly consistently.

My younger one started out hitting it into the net between the two halves of the court. My older one, a head taller than everyone, clearly more developed, and just as clearly short on coordination and ball control, started out hitting it across the entire court at over 50mph and into the net separating different courts entirely.

That would change over the year. Time worked its magic. After a few months, they both managed to land the ball inside the huge square called the court, where the opposing team actually stood. Thank God they chose volleyball over basketball. That would have been a disaster.

Very quickly, my older son pretty much moved into the gym, joining every practice he could, and the libero of his team, who seemed to already be living there permanently.

Learning the rules

When I played volleyball in middle school, there was a simple rule. You had to serve to score. If the other team was serving and you won the rally, you didn’t get a point, you got the serve. Simple.

Apparently that rule is long gone.

So fine, rules change. And as I watched more, it seemed one kid was always setting, one always played middle, one right side, and so on. I naturally assumed they’d gotten rid of rotations too, because when I played, everybody rotated through every position.

But I was wrong, rotations are still there. Technically the players rotate, the server hits the ball, and then, in something that looks to me like a carefully choreographed evacuation drill, everybody sprints into the position they actually play.

As far as I can tell, rotations now exist primarily so the players can spend half a second somewhere they have absolutely no intention of staying.

I suppose some rules evolve while others survive for reasons nobody fully understands. I certainly don’t.

Raising Athletes

There we were, proud new volleyball parents, deep in fall practice season.

It was going well… sometimes. Specifically when they ate and slept well, stretched, did their strength training, and were sort of beginning to grasp what it actually means to become an athlete.

But at that age, listening to your parents — who are, by definition of the teenage brain that just received a PhD in Life from the University of YouTube, completely clueless — is not on the menu. And stretching and real food are boring.

So some tournaments became a combination of eating a mountain of junk for six hours, feeling great, at least while chewing, then… oops, energy collapse. Better fix it with gummy bears.

“No, Mom, I don’t want the sandwich. Can you please go refill my water bottle? I’d like to stare at my phone and hang out with my friends who… stare at their phones. You’re my personal support system, remember?” Thank you to the coaches who occasionally took all their phones, of course, at the exact moment I was actually trying to communicate with my kid.

And then, at the end of the day, they were exhausted, needed real food immediately — and lots of it. And did I mention grumpy? Especially if they lost that last game, which amplified everything by a factor of ten. Or a hundred. Hard to say.

By Christmas they’d done three tournaments and apparently knew everything there was to know about travel volleyball.

Me?

Of course I was still the clueless one, despite the hundreds of hours I’d logged on bleachers next to Dad, watching them play.

“Oh, and by the way, Mom… why are the billion videos you take of me so blurry? And why is the format always wrong for Instagram? Dad does a much better job.”

Yes… You’re welcome, honey.

While the boys were learning to become athletes, we were learning to become travel volleyball parents.

Which, it turns out, is a sport of its own, requiring just as much strategy, endurance, and bench time… oh, and let’s not forget: rotations between mom and dad! Let me explain…

Tournament Day

I found out the hard way that there were morning and afternoon waves. And of course, one of my boys’ teams ended up playing mostly the morning waves, 7am-1pm, while the other played in the afternoon, 2–7pm. Which meant that, as a family with two players, we were in the gym… all day. Ugh.

Option one: we get up at 4:30 a.m., extract our grumpy teens from bed, and drive two or three hours while they sleep in the car.

Option two: we don’t.

Option one wasn’t working for a two-teams-in-the-same-day family, so we simply had to add a hotel night the day before, and pay for it, purely to protect our poor, exhausted, middle-aged nervous systems, which had just discovered they were in for 12-hour volleyball days, because six hours apparently wasn’t enough, unless… rotations! Dad takes the mornings, mom the afternoons, as soon as the schedule gets out we run into our positions and play from there, because I can tell you this much, this year sure felt like we were both on the roster.

But back to costs. After paying an amount I’m embarrassed to admit just to get our kids to play ball, plus several extra hotel rooms to stay sane, we also had to pay for parking, and for, get this, entering the gym to watch the child I birthed (okay, conceived, if you’re a dad, at least that part was fun), fed, raised, dressed, kept alive, driven to practices, and flown across the country.

So yes, after all that, we pay to watch our kids play, if we’re lucky. Or watch them watch their teammates play, if we’re unlucky, and they’re benched during the exact game I made the tremendous effort to show up for, because it’s out of system, aka out of my afternoon rotation.

And during all of it, in the loud gym, with your noise-cancelling ear things (assuming you didn’t leave them in the hotel room while questioning why any adult would set up an event that loud in the first place — the refs, you’ll notice, wear earbuds, some even sunglasses, to protect themselves; nobody has ever explained why the people who chose this job need more protective equipment than the players?! Did you see the coach wearing a helmet?), you may begin to question your life choices… and humanity. But maybe that’s just me.

Because what else is there to do during endless tournament hours between games?

You could walk across an enormous neighboring parking lot and accidentally miss your kid’s rotation. You could buy a wildly overpriced açaí bowl that pretends to be healthy because of the sweetened strawberries piled on top of what is, structurally, sugar ice cream. You could buy a $10 water bottle because you forgot yours. You could lock yourself in a quiet bathroom stall purely to give your nervous system a break, and hear another mother already in the next stall, doing exactly the same thing, in silence, in solidarity. Or you could sit in your car and accidentally drain its battery, or sit on the floor of a giant convention center, because there isn’t enough seating for the parents who paid an arm and a leg to be there.

Choose your option.

We drove and flew them all over the place for ten months, and if no one had told me where I was, I wouldn’t have known, because every convention center looks the same from the inside. Well… unless you step out of the blasting, freezing Florida air conditioning into the sauna that Floridians simply call “outside.”

They could have sent me to the moon and I wouldn’t have noticed.

Enormous noisy halls. Far too many people. Whistles everywhere. And some courts a bright, aggressive red, as if the migraine needed help.

During warm-ups, we doubled as human shields for stray balls, because we were that close to the court. Back up, though, and you’d get hit from behind by balls from the next court over. If those came from older teenagers, you were genuinely safer facing the 14U serves.

All of which is to say: thank God our kids became volleyball players, because as goalies they would have sucked.

The Parent Bench

That’s where all the benched parents sit, all of them, every time. So please, kids, stop complaining when you get benched, because there is an age when it’s… forever.

And what do we do? Well, that depends. Some of us record and produce beautiful, steady, correctly formatted videos and photos (thank you so much for sharing those!). Others of us come home with photos, because we forgot to switch the phone to video. Or with forty seconds of blurry gym ceiling, because we hit record when we meant to stop, and stop when we meant to record. And on the rare occasion we capture the actual play, it’s in the wrong format — at least according to teenage-YouTube-PhD-brain, because it goes blurry when he uploads it to Instagram. So… thank you again, first group, so very much, for sharing yours.

Then, getting back to what else is happening on the parent bench: some of us cheer occasionally and quietly, others enthusiastically, loudly, and incessantly. My ears still ring with your enthusiasm late at night, in the dark and quiet of my bedroom… You know who you are. So, to those who shall not be named: 10pm is the curfew. Please respect! Greatly appreciated.

Personally, I’m on the quieter side. I do switch categories though, but I never go to the full you-know-who-you-are extreme. I start in the cheering-quietly-and-sometimes category, especially in the first match. But more precisely:

On day one, I cheer for the win.

On day two, I really hope they win in two sets, not three — so I cheer for that second set to finish.

On day three, I cheer rarely, because by now the bright lights, loud whistles, red courts, incessantly bouncing balls, squeaking shoes, and the you-know-who-you-are parents have destroyed my eardrums and eyeballs, and all my efforts to relax, enjoy, and keep the migraine at bay have failed. So I go quiet. Really quiet. In a really, really loud gym.

And if it’s bracket play, I go even quieter than really really quiet, because I might accidentally cheer for the other team so we can go home early — but that is not something you can say out loud, so… even quieter!

But I’ll whisper the hypothesis that maybe, just maybe… I’m not the only one. And of course, only moms would maybe do that. Dads would never. No, of course not!

And if there’s a day four, I send Dad, because… I just can’t take it anymore.

Now, when we’re not cheering, we may be complaining, because our kid is benched, right after telling our kid not to complain because they’re benched. And then find out it’s called rotation! First we wonder quietly, mentally, then a little louder to our neighbor, and eventually even louder, to the coaches.

Conversations With the Coaches

At some point, every volleyball parent develops an irresistible urge to have a perfectly calm, completely reasonable conversation with the coaches — usually to remind them that you signed up to watch your kid play, not to fly them to the far side of the country to watch them watch their teammates play.

Before walking over to the coaches, I always tried to remind myself of one important detail: this is my child. Which means I’m simultaneously overly critical and overly protective — a fascinating combination I tried very hard to hide while surely failing. I’m fairly certain everyone could see right through me, mostly because every parent was doing a version of the exact same thing.

I did have genuinely meaningful conversations with our coaches, and I’m grateful for them. I’m still not a volleyball expert, but I’ve got the best seat for becoming one — and after all those conversations, I do have some answers I’m eager to share with you. Or should I say… one answer. The answer.

Why did that kid play for one minute and then disappear?

Rotations.

Why are two players suddenly holding hands before the serve, only to sprint in opposite directions half a second later?

Rotations.

Why is one player standing in the middle of the court doing absolutely nothing until the referee nods and the libero sprints on?

Rotations.

Why are they all pointing at each other while some more expressive coaches yell their positions because nobody knows where they’re supposed to stand?

Rotations.

Why did that kid play the entire tournament while others barely touched the floor?

Rotations.

By Christmas, that one word was ringing in my ears like that famous song built around… well… one word.

Tequila!

I still don’t understand rotations. I couldn’t explain them to you if my life depended on it — or with the help of tequila. But I now know, with complete certainty, that if you ever ask a volleyball coach a question about playing time, the answer is almost certainly:

Rotations.

And suddenly it all made sense. That’s why rotations were still a thing! Otherwise, what would the coaches answer?

Luckily for me, I found one coach who became my favorite complaint recipient. It didn’t feel fair to unload on the younger coaches. They practically lived in that gym, pouring endless hours into these kids. So, to the coach who became my favorite sounding board: thank you for listening. And to the younger coaches, thank you for all the hard work and endless hours on the courts. … You’re welcome.

From the parents’ bench, this is what it looks like.

Travel volleyball is an enormous commitment of time, money, weekends, hotel rooms, and emotional energy. We all want our kids to improve. We all know that not everyone can be on the court all the time (rotations!), but confidence matters too. We signed up hoping you’d help turn our kids into great volleyball players, while at home we’re trying to turn little humans into kind, resilient, confident young adults.

At Christmas, two weeks after I was told the new recruits would not be joining our team, I received an email saying, “Please welcome the new recruits to our team.” They turned out to be wonderful kids with lovely families — but adding players halfway through the season reshuffles everyone’s position and playtime.

And I’m sure…

Rotations.

So I reserve the right to be surprised — and amused — by both the timing and the email.

I do think there’s a more transparent way to approach it though. Tell parents during recruitment: this team is here to win. Or tell them: this team is here to give every player an opportunity to grow. Either philosophy is perfectly reasonable. Just let families know what they’re signing up for, and maybe don’t change halfway through the season. Managing expectations goes a long way when the commitment is measured in dollars, weekends, miles, and heart.

Nationals On the Other Side of the Country

But why? Do volleyballs bounce better over there?

Anyway, we made it to the AAU Nationals in Orlando, Florida. Of course, I was sure nothing unexpected would happen. I was sure everyone would get enough sleep. I was convinced nobody would forget their jerseys, every teenager would make excellent nutritional choices, and all parents would remain calm and emotionally regulated at all times, myself included.

And that’s almost exactly how it happened… except for:

• Some jetlag messing with our sleep

• Some excessively freezing AC trying to compensate for global warming and Florida heat at noon in July

• Some Orange County Convention Center food that cost a fortune and didn’t taste like it

• Some last-minute panics about forgotten jerseys

• Some very full schedules that turned long gym days into even longer “vacation” days — and perfect schedules for families with multiple players, who either got two full weeks or one week of 14-hour days

It was absolutely, insanely fantastic. The kids had a blast, some parents were hanging on to life, the wallets felt much lighter, and the coaches must be superhuman. I was more exhausted than the kids who spent every minute on the court, and I was very grateful when it was over.

Thank you!

Thank you to the coaches.

For working relentlessly to help my kids grow on the court. For running practices hard enough that they came home wired, starving, and in desperate need of a shower, even when those practices ran way past 9 p.m.

They thrived on it.

Meanwhile, I was sleepwalking into a grumpy zombie because it was waaaay past my bedtime.

That part’s on me, not you.

And I’m proud of my two kids.

They grew… two actual inches, right out of the uniform sizes I’d ordered at the beginning of the season, but also as athletes, and as human beings, inside this extraordinary mess that we, the adults, create for them, and that we, the parents, pay for.

I’m learning that sometimes the greatest athletic achievement isn’t what happens on the court, it’s surviving several days in a convention center and still loving everyone when we get home.

So you’ll understand that writing this is part of my… dealing mechanism… healing mechanism… slow recovery… because we just finished Nationals, and summer season has already started, and we’re already talking about tryouts for next year.

And no, next year the tournaments won’t be politely spaced three weekends apart, because my boys won’t play in the same age group anymore. So instead of driving to a tournament every few weekends, it’ll be… much more. 🥴