Volleyball question- where did all these athletes come from?
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Anonymous
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I live across the country in an area that is having the same girls' volleyball boom as seemingly everywhere else. I've followed the recent volleyball threads with a lot of interest because I have friends with girls older than mine who have been on the volleyball tryout roller coaster with very mixed results.
I grew up in a midwestern state where volleyball was big, but it was MS/HS teams only and only 1-2 girls per school made it to a club team and they were D1 recruits from day 1. I loved volleyball, but it had zero cachet and aside from kids I knew from CA, no one was scheming to make the team starting in 4th grade. I've heard for years that the majority of teen girls stop playing organized sports by age 13. So where are all these teenage girls who are aspiring to play club volleyball coming from? Are they coming from other sports, and if so, what sports are losing such vast quantities of athletes that they're fueling the volleyball boom? For example, are these girls who would have been cut from small roster sports like basketball 30 years ago and are finding longevity in volleyball instead? Or are they girls who would have stepped away from sports altogether after elementary school but are finding their fit in volleyball? |
Anonymous
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I can only speak for my DD and her friends. We wanted our DD to play a team sport because all of the lessons she can learn from such experience. But she didn't want to play any sport involving contact, so we had very limited options. She discovered volleyball through a camp as things started opening up after the pandemic. We tried to sign her up for as many volleyball activities as soon as we heard that she liked it, but we only found rec leagues through the city of Gaithersburg and clinics through Montgomery County (we were not very good at doing these searches). I wish we were more knowledgeable about the club scene because we could have started club volleyball one year earlier. By the time we learned about tryouts, they were already over and the rosters were full. There was one more year of rec for her (which started to become frustrating because the level was really low), then club rec league through MVSA, then club (a different club - she didn't make any of the MVSA teams).
About half of the players on her JV team didn't have club experience. Some did a few clinics over the summer thinking that they might try out for HS sports. After the JV season was over, the girls learned about the club landscape and signed up for tryouts. If the numbers at our HS are similar to the numbers at other high schools, then the number of players pretty much double at the transition between MS and HS. |
Anonymous
| My DD started when she was 9. She did a few clinics and loved the game. She outgrew the clinics very quickly and joined an 11u club. I had no idea what club entailed when I signed up but I can’t imagine any other option for her. Most of the girls on her team have been playing since 11u or 12u. She is actually annoyed playing with girls who have no club experience because they are slow, don’t know the game and bring the team down but every year, new girls join because they are super tall. She and her old teammates will probably get squeezed out soon by the taller girls but that’s life. The new girls that joined were doing other sports before and wanted to try something new. They end up loving it because it’s not a contact sport and the teammates end up being very good friends. A friend of DD joined because she heard how much DD was enjoying it and another girl I know joined because her mom was a D1 player. |
Anonymous
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Volleyball has always been big in the middle of the country (all of the midwest + Oklahoma and Texas at very least). It's very competitive from a young age.
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Anonymous
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Covid shut everything down for my DD when she was 11, who then was doing soccer (because we wanted her in a sport, she needs the activity and she had already tried swimming, tennis, field hockey, cross country and lacrosse). So things shut down, no sports at all.
Once school sports opened back up when she was 13, her school required a team sport and she signed up for volleyball. She really liked it (probably because that first team was such a nice group of girls, a really great coach and it was all super low stakes). He suggested she try out for club so we went to 4 club try outs and got 3 offers (in 2021). She had an ok experience in that first club. In 2022, she made JV in high school and had a fantastic coach. He also encouraged her to try out for club, but that year we noticed an exponential increase in the number of girls trying out. Things were really opened up by then and everyone was coming out of the woodwork. She got 1 offer, took it, loved the team, parents were nice. Good experience. But that club disbanded so she was without a returning club in 2023. Even more girls showed up for try outs last year, with some try outs "selling out". Also the difference in heights was very noticeable. It was clear our DD had stopped growing, and now in walked 5 ft 10+ girls. The popularity of women's college volleyball had made its way to the DMV. You can now watch it on tv, sell out crowd to watch Nebraska play UMD, etc. Something just happened from 2022-2023. She got one offer, took it and had a horrible experience with that last club. DD who's U17 now decided her club days are over and she wants to just do high school. She did not try out for club this year. |
Anonymous
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My 13 year old DD has been playing pretty high level club soccer for 5 years. Been playing rec volleyball for three. She wanted to do club volleyball and I told her she had to choose. She chose club volleyball and landed on the top national team for the club.
So, she’s 5’10” and in great athletic shape. |
Anonymous
| Out softball league has a vague sense that we are losing athletes to volleyball. |
Anonymous
No offense, but softball sucks, no wonder girls are looking for a different sport. |
Anonymous
My kids would sharply disagree (as would many more I know), but your family is welcome to do you. Meanwhile I'll keep working to make our league a good experience for everyone who plays there as long as they do, even if they eventually end up going to volleyball 
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Anonymous
Yeah. I played softball when I was 9-12 as a kid and I was always irritated we weren’t just playing baseball. I even asked my mom if I could do little league but she said no. Now I see they’ve added full face shields to the sport and it just adds to the insult. No other sport besides football/hockey is doing that. Are we teaching girls to the that scared? I digress… OP- a lot of these athletes popping up in Volleyball are kids who had their sport shut down or minimized during the pandemic. They tried to stick with it or maybe tried to do something else that was available. My daughter has tried every sport out there and stuck with a few for more than 1 season but recently discovered a love for volleyball through a school team. She had an athletic background so picking up volleyball wasn’t hard for her. |
Anonymous
While not necessarily a complete picture, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) has as annual survey that might shed some light on some trends. You can look at archived surveys at https://www.nfhs.org/sports-resource-content/high-school-participation-survey-archive/. Cherry picking some "girls" sports from the 2009-10, 2016-17, and 2023-24 surveys, there do seem to be some changes in participation rates that might suggest that athletes are switching from other sports to volleyball. Girls participation rates for 2009-10: Basketball: 439,550 Soccer: 356,116 Softball: 378,211 Volleyball: 403,985 Girls participation rates for 2016-17: Basketball: 430,368 Soccer: 388,339 Softball: 367,405 Volleyball: 444,779 Girls participation figures for 2023-24: Basketball: 367,284 Soccer: 383,895 Softball: 345,451 Volleyball: 479,125 It does appear that participation in volleyball is trending upwards, while participation in basketball, soccer, and softball are trending downwards (although participation rates for soccer are a little more level). Obviously you can't tell just from these figures whether the decrease in girls participating in these other sports have switched to volleyball. This timeframe also encompasses the COVID pandemic which complicates things further. Given the change in numbers for basketball seems especially drastic, perhaps you could speculate that the most other athletes are switching from basketball to volleyball. And maybe given the fact that height is a key indicator of potential in both sports, this makes sense. As other have noted, there also seems to be some regional trends happening too. While volleyball has always been really popular in southern California, Florida, Texas, and pockets of the midwest, it seems to be on the rise in the mid Atlantic, New England, and other parts of the country where it hasn't been as popular. Seems like there might be a good topic for a thesis project in trying to figure out these trends. |
Anonymous
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From the boy's perspective. It's becoming more popular, perhaps in part because of a popular anime show but it's a very exciting game with wall to wall "showtime" moments.
When they started it in FCPS we saw some schools really dominate because volleyball was such an expensive niche boy's sport and some schools had enough club players to fill their roster while others had none. Expect a lot of turnover in the top teams as athlete from other sports like basketball (blocking) and baseball (hitting) drift towards volleyball for various reasons. |
Anonymous
I like you - you are such a good sport. I wrote that as a joke and I am happy you took it that way. Good luck with the softball league! |
Anonymous
| NP with younger kids here. A few posters cited the pandemic as a reason for increased participation in volleyball - why would that be? Wouldn’t indoor volleyball have been shut down as much as any other indoor sport, and more so than outdoor sports. |
Anonymous
| The only thing I would think Covid would have done is to have kids switching from indoor sports to outdoor sports. |