Volleyball club- recap and thoughts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Re: Renaissance - don't know what happened, but yes, stay away from there. Owner encouraged our daughter to come on board in order to secure a spot long term while a friend of mine's daughter who is older who has been through this says he daughter received continuous e-mails/texts from the owner to replace long standing players on the team at her age group. In addition, they have a contract to rent space in a shared gym, they have been bumped out from time to time (not permanently) and have had to go to other places. The owner required the parents to foot the bill for the new space even though they already paid for the existing space. Parents that I have talked to there have moved their kids. In addition, the volleyball there isn't that great - certainly not worth the aggravation.

That is rough. The whole EC Power fold + the creation of Renaissance just seemed shady. Gym space is by far the most difficult thing to obtain in this area. Any club that has their own facility has a significant edge among their competition in the CHRVA region.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Re: Renaissance - don't know what happened, but yes, stay away from there. Owner encouraged our daughter to come on board in order to secure a spot long term while a friend of mine's daughter who is older who has been through this says he daughter received continuous e-mails/texts from the owner to replace long standing players on the team at her age group. In addition, they have a contract to rent space in a shared gym, they have been bumped out from time to time (not permanently) and have had to go to other places. The owner required the parents to foot the bill for the new space even though they already paid for the existing space. Parents that I have talked to there have moved their kids. In addition, the volleyball there isn't that great - certainly not worth the aggravation.

I'm not clear what you mean by "long term". A spot on a club team is guaranteed for one season only. Obviously, many players come back to the same club year after year, but I think it would be unusual for a club/coach to be making any commitments beyond a single season.

And are you saying the owner was contacting players ahead of tryouts and encouraging them to come tryout or that he was trying to recruit players to join the team mid-season? Recruiting players to come to tryouts is pretty normal but recruiting players after the season has started would be unusual and potentially against the rules if they play for another club.

Totally agree that the club asking parents to pay additional for practice space when the original practice space falls through is super shady. If the club had reserved/paid for space for a particular date and it then it wasn't available, I can't imagine that they wouldn't get their money back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECP Chesapeake has folded. I just got an email. This is my DD’s former club, she had been attending the invite only clinics, they took our money. I am now contesting with my credit card.

I should have taken these posts as a red flag. We just wrapped up our season with RVC. What a crap shoot.

Did something happen with Renaissance?

I would not recommend Renaissance Chesapeake to my worst enemy. Two highly unsatisfied teams, under 1 coach, and all the blame goes on the parents. Gaslighting, lies, and empty promises.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Re: Renaissance - don't know what happened, but yes, stay away from there. Owner encouraged our daughter to come on board in order to secure a spot long term while a friend of mine's daughter who is older who has been through this says he daughter received continuous e-mails/texts from the owner to replace long standing players on the team at her age group. In addition, they have a contract to rent space in a shared gym, they have been bumped out from time to time (not permanently) and have had to go to other places. The owner required the parents to foot the bill for the new space even though they already paid for the existing space. Parents that I have talked to there have moved their kids. In addition, the volleyball there isn't that great - certainly not worth the aggravation.

I mentioned Renaissance to a coach at a different club and their face was priceless. Coach said he's Heard terrible things. I told him he is hearing correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECP Chesapeake has folded. I just got an email. This is my DD’s former club, she had been attending the invite only clinics, they took our money. I am now contesting with my credit card.

I should have taken these posts as a red flag. We just wrapped up our season with RVC. What a crap shoot.

Did something happen with Renaissance?

I would not recommend Renaissance Chesapeake to my worst enemy. Two highly unsatisfied teams, under 1 coach, and all the blame goes on the parents. Gaslighting, lies, and empty promises.

I don’t have any experience with Renaissance but avoided because of negative experiences with ECP. How is the season going with the Mojo teams? DD didn’t try out there for the same reasons.

[FPYCparent]

Is there any reasoning for Blue Ridge sending teams to a qualifier if the teams were not going to accept any GJNC bids? I hope the players and parents were well aware that no earned bids would be accepted as early as possible. I understand that the club may be more focused on beach volleyball, but I'd like to think that they have some players that would benefit from playing in front of recruiters in Las Vegas.

[Anonymous]

FPYCparent wrote:Is there any reasoning for Blue Ridge sending teams to a qualifier if the teams were not going to accept any GJNC bids? I hope the players and parents were well aware that no earned bids would be accepted as early as possible. I understand that the club may be more focused on beach volleyball, but I'd like to think that they have some players that would benefit from playing in front of recruiters in Las Vegas.

Blue Ridge has only had 1 indoor Division 1 commitment in their entire existence as a club. They (and their players/families) clearly do not care about them playing indoor D1 volleyball (they also don’t play in Open at qualifiers). Their focus just seems to be on beach recruiting (I think they’ve had 5-6 beach D1 commits).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

FPYCparent wrote:Is there any reasoning for Blue Ridge sending teams to a qualifier if the teams were not going to accept any GJNC bids? I hope the players and parents were well aware that no earned bids would be accepted as early as possible. I understand that the club may be more focused on beach volleyball, but I'd like to think that they have some players that would benefit from playing in front of recruiters in Las Vegas.

Blue Ridge has only had 1 indoor Division 1 commitment in their entire existence as a club. They (and their players/families) clearly do not care about them playing indoor D1 volleyball (they also don’t play in Open at qualifiers). Their focus just seems to be on beach recruiting (I think they’ve had 5-6 beach D1 commits).

The focus on beach volleyball has been the rationale that I have heard, but their indoor teams do play in summer tournaments. I see they have teams registered for AAU Nationals at the end of June in Orlando. Blue Ridge teams did play at regionals last season and several teams went to USAV GJNC in Chicago although they did not play in regionals this year. With the USAV GJNC being in Las Vegas this season for the age groups 14-17, perhaps they just prefer to go to Orlando for AAU. Also, 2 seasons ago the Blue Ridge 15s (now the current 17s) made it all the way to the finals of the 15 Premier division at AAU Nationals coming in 2nd place which was a pretty great finish.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone else find Paramount's instagram posts to be amusing? Instead of just celebrating their successes (of which they deserve to be very proud), they frequently frame their posts in some strained way that makes them the "Only CHRVA club..." to do X or Y. Their recent post about their teams that earned bids to Nationals is a good example.

Instead of just acknowledging the huge accomplishment of their 15s earning an open bid, they say "Only CHRVA club with an OPEN BID in the U15 age group this season. Under the modern format of GJNC, the CHRVA Region has only had a total of six U15 teams qualify in Open, one of which was our own U15 team back in the 2021 season!"

Similarly, when they were hyping up their teams attending Triple Crown, they kept saying awkward things like "Given the fact that Paramount VBC is the only CHRVA club to be invited to and accepted into the 2024 Triple Crown NIT..." While this assertion is technically true (Metro was invited but didn't accept making Paramount the only CHRVA club invited and accepted), I feel like it would be more effective to just say they are excited to go to Triple Crown or if they really believe there is a reason to put it in a CHRVA context, say they were the only CHRVA club attending.

These strangely worded posts always seem like a thinly veiled (and a little desperate) attempt to one-up Metro. Paramount has pretty firmly established themselves as a top CHRVA club - they are no longer some unknown under dog and they should just promote and celebrate their successes without worrying so much about how it stacks up against Metro, or any other club.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I would agree. The Paramount posts are overly wordy and are definitely posting with a chip in their shoulder. Metro’s Instagram comes off as confident and proud of their teams and players. Paramount’s Instagram has changed considerably this year. I assume they have a new social media person.

[Anonymous]

I always chuckle when I read Paramount posts. Somebody needs to tell them they are a top team so they should act like it. It’s like they have imposter syndrome or something.

[Anonymous]

They all do it, with the exception of Metro. VAE were proclaiming 3rd place in 18s at nationals….no mention of the division tho. Credit where credit is due but why pretend they were 3rd in all of nationals….they should be proud that it was 3rd in American division, that’s still very good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They all do it, with the exception of Metro. VAE were proclaiming 3rd place in 18s at nationals….no mention of the division tho. Credit where credit is due but why pretend they were 3rd in all of nationals….they should be proud that it was 3rd in American division, that’s still very good.

No horse in the race here, but I’ve been around CHRVA for a long time. Metro is all propaganda. Silvia likes to take credit for all of Metro’s success going back to 1998 (when Barry Goldberg founded the club). She didn’t take over as the director until 2015 when she bought the club from Barry, but at that point she was inheriting what was already by far the most dominant club in the CHRVA region. Silvia likes people to think that she started the club from scratch when she bought it in 2015 (to put that into perspective, I believe VAJRS was formed in 2011 and Paramount was formed in 2016). Silvia is so insecure that whenever somebody calls Metro “Metro American” volleyball club (which is what it was for 15+ years before she bought the club from Barry), she immediately corrects them and gets hot. She’s tried to rebrand so much by making sure all their propaganda has “Metro Volleyball Club of DC” on it, but people who’ve been around the volleyball scene for a while know that Barry built that club into what it is.

I agree about Paramount’s posts being clearly pointed at throwing shade at Metro/other clubs, and that their posts are wordy. My guess is since Paramount is a much younger club than Metro, they are trying to point out how much success they’ve had while only having been around for a much more limited amount of time than Metro has

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They all do it, with the exception of Metro. VAE were proclaiming 3rd place in 18s at nationals….no mention of the division tho. Credit where credit is due but why pretend they were 3rd in all of nationals….they should be proud that it was 3rd in American division, that’s still very good.

No horse in the race here, but I’ve been around CHRVA for a long time. Metro is all propaganda. Silvia likes to take credit for all of Metro’s success going back to 1998 (when Barry Goldberg founded the club). She didn’t take over as the director until 2015 when she bought the club from Barry, but at that point she was inheriting what was already by far the most dominant club in the CHRVA region. Silvia likes people to think that she started the club from scratch when she bought it in 2015 (to put that into perspective, I believe VAJRS was formed in 2011 and Paramount was formed in 2016). Silvia is so insecure that whenever somebody calls Metro “Metro American” volleyball club (which is what it was for 15+ years before she bought the club from Barry), she immediately corrects them and gets hot. She’s tried to rebrand so much by making sure all their propaganda has “Metro Volleyball Club of DC” on it, but people who’ve been around the volleyball scene for a while know that Barry built that club into what it is.

I agree about Paramount’s posts being clearly pointed at throwing shade at Metro/other clubs, and that their posts are wordy. My guess is since Paramount is a much younger club than Metro, they are trying to point out how much success they’ve had while only having been around for a much more limited amount of time than Metro has

I think it’s true that the Metro that exists today had a head start by buying/taking over an existing and already successful club. That said, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Silvia hasn’t continued to grow and improve on what Coach Goldberg started. From the continued success of the travel teams, to expanding the regional programs, Silvia has done a lot to make Metro what it is now. Also, I think she does acknowledge what Barry did, both for the club and for volleyball in the DMV. The fact that Metro Travel teams continue to go to Capitol Hill every year instead of Triple Crown is out of respect for Barry and his legacy.

On the issue of Paramount’s social media, personally I think it would be more effective if they simply celebrated their accomplishments but maybe they think they will be able to lure some of the better players in the region away if they continuously point any way that they are outperforming Metro. I do think it’s going to be interesting to see if Paramount fielding competitive younger teams while Metro continues with 13s being the youngest Travel team changes the CHRVA pecking order in the future.

[Anonymous]

I agree that some clubs try too hard and come out weird. I've also seen some posts from MVSA trying to explain away why they lost one of their pool games or why they ended up second. It just sounds very insecure. On the other hand, some of the less established clubs simply brag about their teams earning a spot in whatever bracket they ended up. It feels like a much better strategy.