Volleyball club- recap and thoughts
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Anonymous
This is the OP, the Moco Fall Program seems like a great program, but it is 30-35 miles away from my home. I don't know if it's worth the 1 1/2 hour drive, and it sucks because it looks like such a good program. I'll keep thinking about it, thanks for the tip! |
Anonymous
I looked on the 540 website and they seem like a very solid team, but their lowest team costs 3000+ dollars!!! It's a lot for a local, low level team. |
Anonymous
Sorry, OP again, I forgot to add that the practice location is still 30+ miles from my area 
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Anonymous
I’m the poster that suggested staying with VV because of cost. You are beginning to see why! You will find the local, low level non travel club teams in VA that are not much higher than rec are charging 2-3k+. |
Anonymous
You are already a hero for driving from Lorton to Fairfax for VV, which - I assume - is not an easy drive either. It would take you 2-3x longer to make it to Bethesda for MOCO practices / programs. you have Monument Volleyball close to you, but it ranks lower than VV. It looks like you don't have good choices that are reasonably priced. I agree with the PP, your best choice is to stay with VV, unless your DD has a chance to make a college team. Hopefully, the VV players change their attitudes as they get older and wiser. |
Anonymous
It really doesn't feel like large numbers of girls are going to top D1 programs. And some go to mid-majors but it feels like lower mid-majors as well. What I don't get is why aren't more girls going to High Academic D3 especially given how much interest there is in these schools in the DMV. The volleyball is good and there is no reason that more girls shouldn't be able to use volleyball to help them get into great schools with sub 15% admissions rates. A quick look at the top high academic D3 programs shows that CA kids outnumber DMV kids 10+ to 1 in conferences like the NESCAC and UAA. Feels like DMV volleyball is missing something here. |
Anonymous
I have a son that plays volleyball, and one of our biggest priorities was distance. Practices 2-3 times per week is a LOT, esp. with two working parents. So we limited ourselves by distance. And remember, commute time equals money. Have you mapped out where clubs are relative to your house? From Lorton, the St. James and Evolution 360 may be the closest. |
Anonymous
I do think DMV volleyball is missing something here, but this is about the clubs, not the players and parents. Most people in the area don't care about their kids playing volleyball in college. Let me rephrase that. Most people don't want their kids to play volleyball in college. They want their kids to go to college and focus on their studies, gain expertise and get a good job. It is very difficult to do that while playing college volleyball (or any other sport). You either let your grades slip (you don't gain expertise) or you let volleyball slip (and you lose your place on the roster along with your scholarship). Kudos to those who can handle both, but I doubt there's many of them. With a few exceptions, the clubs should stop pretending that this is the end goal. Let's play locally and avoid travel for the sake of travel. You can find local clubs to kick your behind, you don't need to travel overnight to get your behind kicked. |
Anonymous
There are lots of players in the DMV playing in college. Last count the 2025 class had 70+ commits, from D1-D3. The actual number is probably higher, haven’t seen a recent count as final decisions happened this year. They do tend to come from a small number of clubs though, generally those that have teams competing at CHRVA bids/qualifiers and traveling. Last check there were 10-12 clubs with at least 3 commits on their 18s teams. There are a number of high academic players as well, but they tend to be more spread out amongst clubs—-metro and paramount aren’t generally getting many players into those schools, but there are certainly exceptions. High academic volleyball recruiting correlates more with the players HS than their club, at least in the DMV. You often see players from the DMV private schools like GDS, Bullis, Sidwell, etc. going to those schools. There’s also a reasonable number from MCPS schools in MD. The real reason CA outnumbers DMV is because there is more population in CA, and proportionally more of that population play volleyball. They’ve been playing it longer there, and it’s a bigger sport with more established recruiting pathways. Playing a sport in college is hard, and it isn’t for everyone. There’s nothing wrong with playing club volleyball-at any level-and then moving on to other things in college. Certain clubs absolutely focus (arguably over focus) on the college recruiting as a way to differentiate, but there are lots of clubs that’s don’t—even if they are successfully getting players onto college teams. |
Anonymous
High academic schools? Aside from Ivy League, what other conferences are you classifying in that category? |
Anonymous
I will not dispute the number because I don't really care. 70+ players from the DMV area is what? 5% of the total number of players? 10%? How does that affect what I just said about the clubs missing the point? |
Anonymous
Well, you’d need to know how many 18s teams there are in CHRVA (62), and roughly how many of those are in the DMV (~30). 70+ commits is 20%, the final number is probably somewhere around 30%-40%, its higher if you add in players playing club volleyball in college. 30% is plenty for some clubs to focus on college recruiting as a primary marketing tactic. While I don’t agree with never ending stream of social media posts about it—especially when a player played for other clubs for the vast majority of their club career—it is a business and there are enough players/families that want to pursue college volleyball in the region to make it possible to focus a club on it.
If you truly believe those that are committing to play in college are likely to “let their grades slip or let volleyball slip”, then it’s ok not to pursue it. Find a club that doesn’t prioritize and/or demand college recruiting to play on their teams like Metro Travel, VA elite, Paramount, etc. do. But consider that these days the old stereotypes about college athletes generally don’t hold true anymore. In fact, GPA and graduation rates for athletes in sports like volleyball are actually higher than in the general student body. If you’d like to read more on the topic, there’s a great article at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/socf.12967 |
Anonymous
D1: Ivy, Big10, ACC, PAC12 D3: NESCAC, UAA, Centennial, Liberty, NEAC, SCIAC There’s at lot of players going to schools in those divisions from the DMV. |
Anonymous
It's easy to cherry-pick articles that appear to make your point. When you want to have this type of conversations, besides a link to the article, you should also provide a quote that summarizes the point you are trying to make (look what I will be doing next). Not everyone has the time to read an entire article and not everyone is able to interpret the data. The fact that the student athletes manage to graduate with similar GPA as the non-athletes doesn't tell the whole story. Here is a link to an article (https://doi.org/10.70252/FIJG1609) that concludes that "The results of this study sheds light on an important dynamic between athletic identity and academic major selection amongst student-athletes. This dynamic, although seen across all divisions and sports, largely impacts student-athletes who possess a higher degree of athletic identity. This higher degree not only limits the academic scope of student-athletes, but the scope of career preparations and exploration is limited as well. Through academic clustering, overemphasizing the athletic identity of being a student-athlete, and lack of academic and career exploration, student-athletes are finding themselves choosing academic majors with less rigor. By using rigor, or lack thereof, as the basis of academic major selection, student-athletes are choosing to place their athletic career over their academic and/or professional career. This decision negatively impacts academic and career satisfaction, along with future earning potential within their respective career fields." And here is a statement that perfectly explains the results of the study you linked to: "Placing a strong emphasis on meeting the APR requirement is commendable. However, by funneling student-athletes into specific majors due to their lowered rigor and flexibility when scheduling around practice and travel, while also disregarding the interests and goals of the student-athletes, is detrimental to their academic and career trajectories (20). By overemphasizing the role of being an athlete, student-athlete unknowingly create a psychosocial divide between their academic and athletic identities. If this divide leads student-athletes to identify more with their role as an athlete, it can lead to a downward trend in academic output, such as lower grade point averages (GPA) and overall effort put into academics (2). This lowered effort and downward trend in GPAs would negatively impact the APR and GSR, but due to strategic placement in less rigorous majors, the negative trends are successfully prevented." |
Anonymous
NESCAC and UAA for D3, a bit of Patriot League for D1 along with some other schools mixed in. |