5 Tips to Increase your Middle School Volleyball Odds
By Dave Taylor, Coach and Technical Skills Instructor
Ten years ago, my oldest daughter, Brooke, was finishing up her 6th grade year at Henry Middle School. One day she came home and proudly pronounced “Mom! Dad! I made athletics!!”
My wife is much more in tune with our kids than I am and she proudly exclaimed, “Brooke, that’s fantastic. Congratulations!!”
My response? A stupor of thought. What does that mean “make athletics”?
You see, I grew up in a small town in southeastern Washington. Oakesdale was where I spent my life. It was small. Very small (Don’t believe me? Check out the view of the town with Google Maps—turn on “Earth View”)
Population 400. Graduating class of 10.
So growing up for me, there was no “making athletics.” You just showed up to practice on the first day of the season and started playing. It didn’t matter that you didn’t know what the rules were or that you weren’t wearing the right clothes (we were a farming community—seeing someone show up to practice with work boots was common). You were going to learn because you were a body and we needed bodies to field a team.
So back to Brooke’s proud exclamation and my thoughts…I wasn’t totally naïve, we had played softball for several seasons and knew about All Stars. The best of the best made it. The others got the summer off. I worked with Brooke on my own with her hitting, fielding, running, etc. We made a couple of All Star teams over the years, but I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought about “making athletics” in school.
Turns out “making athletics” was a good thing. She had to perform a certain number of exercises, run a distance (mile? Two miles?) and finish in a certain time. The kids who finished it fast enough “made athletics” which meant they had a different school period to attend than the other kids in 7th grade. “Making athletics” meant she could tryout for volleyball, basketball, track or any other girls sport. BUT, as it turns out, this was just sort of a pre-tryout! Just because you could do pushups, situps and run a mile didn’t mean you were a good volleyball player.
So I freaked out. Well, kinda. You see, I wasn’t at the athletic tryout in 6th grade. I had no idea who made it, who didn’t and what the competition was like for the volleyball team. Brooke told me lots of girls made athletics. I tried to get an idea of the word lots, but I think lots in 6th grade vocabulary means between 10 and 100. Obviously she was more excited that she made athletics than she was in counting the number of kids there.
I should have been too. Bad parent. Thinking WAY too far ahead instead of celebrating her success.
Fast forward to August, first week of school, first days of tryouts. I was REALLY nervous. Brooke hadn’t played much volleyball really. A grand total of 3 fall seasons. That would be around 24 hours of practices and maybe 18 hours of game time. 42 hours and here she was going to tryouts to make her middle school volleyball team. Every day, I asked her how it went. Brooke’s a pretty optimistic and cheerful kid by nature, so she said, “fine!” and didn’t offer much more explanation no matter what I asked. Two more days of this tryout thing and I’m still not sure what’s going to happen.
As fate would have it, she made the team.
So now fast forward 10 years. Middle School volleyball has come a long ways since then. I get reports of Middle School A with 100 girls tryouts and Middle School B with 40 girls at tryouts. Only 24 make the team. Talent aside, a girl’s odds of making the team at MS A are roughly 25%. Middle School B is 60%! I’ve seen two girls with the same talent who attended different schools. One made the team, one didn’t. You just never know.
So to help your daughter make the team, let me offer a 5 tips on how to best increase your odds.
1. Hours. The single biggest determining factorI see is time spent playing, practicing or watching volleyball. Not all hours are created equal, however. An hour spent practicing with a coach in a gym is a BETTER hour than an hour spent hitting the ball against the wall. An hour spent playing a volleyball game against another team with referees, a score and parents in the stands is MORE VALUABLE than an hour spent playing at the rec center with your friends. An hour of watching yourself on video and fixing your technique is BETTER than an hour spent at home in front of the TV watching beach volleyball. So it’s possible that two people with 25 hours of volleyball experience could be at different talent levels based on the quality of their hours.
2. “Talk the Talk. Walk the Walk” You have to know how to speak volleyball. And then you have to have the confidence to back up what you know. If a coach asked you, “What position would you like to play?” You could say, “I’d like to try out for setter (or any other position)” and then march into the drill and show coach how good you are. Or you could shrug your shoulders and mumble “I dunno” It’s real easy for a coach to know which one to consider for the team.
3. Serving and Passing. Karch Kiraly is our USA National Team coach. He said it like this. “Serving and passing are the two skills that the USA Women’s National Volleyball Team works on every day in practice – without exception.” If it’s important at the highest levels in volleyball, I’m 100% positive it’s important at ALL levels of the sport. I’ve asked coaches in middle school, high school and college to tell me what they think is the most important skill. Same answer from all of them. “Serving and Passing.” Just getting 10 out of 10 serves over the net isn’t good enough at Middle School A. Now the serves need to be fast and focused to a zone. Consistently. Passing needs to be consistent as well. The goal is to take one of those fast and focused serves and bump it right to the setter, every time. If you can do that, your tryout will be a breeze.
4. Grit. When learning to ride a bike, many of us learned the hard way. We got on the bike and crashed. But we got back up and tried it again. And again. And again. Until we succeeded. I don’t know of too many kids that screamed and yelled, kicked their bikes and threw them down in the ditch because they kept failing. While volleyball is a team sport and there are no tryouts for learning to ride your bike, maybe a simple lesson of learning how to pick yourself back up after failure would be helpful. Grit is the determination to get back on the bike and try again. A player displaying grit on the volleyball court is ok with making mistakes, picks herself up and gets right back at it. I’ve tossed thousands of volleyballs to girls of all ages wanting to spike it over the net. 95% of the time, when someone makes a mistake, they go get their ball and get back in line. What do the other 5% do? They immediately ask me, “Can I go again?” They want to get it right. They display grit.
5. Anything Less Than Your Best Is Unacceptable. This is directly related to your effort on the court. It’s very common for me to see athletes with better talent only giving 50% of their effort because that’s all that it takes to beat the less-talented athlete giving 100%. Coaches know. They know when you’re slacking off just to get by. Some coaches will purposefully take the less-talented athlete because she gives her best no matter what. When a kid gives their all, they can learn at a VERY rapid pace and coaches like that a lot.
So there you have it. 5 tips to increasing your odds of making the volleyball team.
