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[quote=Anonymous]Disclaimer: I’m just a mom and a former player and a college fan, and not an expert.

I’m in a west coast area with really competitive opportunities and huge college pipelines, but we still don’t see much action before the U12 level and most girls are still following the path from 1-2 generations ago and starting in other sports first. Even around here you don’t see those 7/8/9 year olds unless they are hanging out during a sister’s practice.

I think one problem with volleyball is that there isn’t the depth or breadth of opportunity at the beginning. Girls who start early get slotted into the “will be tall” or “will be a libero” or “not great” categories early on. Girls who join in late elementary really dilute the competitiveness of clubs so you end up with one excellent team and a bunch of others on the struggle bus as girls learn the sport. The girls on the beginning teams improve so slowly because they’re not experiencing the same volume of active plays. Then girls start to grow and those tall girls get a TON of attention even if they’re struggling and a lot of the other girls get sidelined regardless of their potential.

Volleyball’s a sport where you can’t get better just practicing or running drills- if you’re not in the court, rotating through and in live plays, you never develop court sense. And there’s only so much room for average and short girls, and teams are small. So when girls get sidelined for 1-2 club seasons and 6-8 girls on the team get all the playing time, the gap widens even more.

I think it’s a sport problem and not just geographic. [/quote]

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