Going Balls Out

Volleyball isn't as popular a sport as football or baseball, at least in the United States. It's been growing slowly over the years into a more thought about sport, what with the multiple ways you can reach some kind of team to play on. If you are willing to try, there is always some way to progress in this sport, whether it be on a high school team or a club team. Most people don't believe there is a difference between a high school team and a club team, but boy are they wrong. The differences might be subtle to a spectator's eye, but to a player they are the biggest differences in the world.

There are many ups and downs to the sport of volleyball and most of them occur in the transition between high school and club volleyball. Acquiring a scholarship is one of hardest feats to accomplish in any sport, whether it be an extremely popular like baseball, or a more low-key sport like volleyball. High school volleyball seems to be tougher to obtain a scholarship in than club volleyball. For one, in high school volleyball you don't travel as much as you do in club and that's one of the aspects that prevent you from Ð''being seen' by the recruiters from all the colleges. When you play club volleyball, you travel a lot more. You travel to different parts of the state and even different parts of the country! Most of the tournaments you attend are just crawling with recruiters! They're everywhere!! It makes your life so much easier when you know there are scouts watching you and taking notes on you.

And the coaching! Oh, the coaching! It's so much different in school ball than in club ball. In club ball coaches seem more relaxed and player-friendly than coaches in school ball. Club coaches don't tend to anger as easily as school coaches when it comes to the actual game of volleyball. They're more understanding of the fact that you made one mistake. Mistakes are apart of human nature and since no one is perfect, why not just accept them? School coaches don't usually seem to understand this concept of human nature. You perform one mistake and it's the end of the world. It's almost as if they expect you to be a perfect creature that makes no mistakes and when you do the coaches are so upset and astonished that they just have to punish you.

While both club and school ball are physically challenging, school ball tends to lean more towards testing your physical mentalness, if that makes any sense. You do a lot more conditioning in school ball than you do in club ball. Put it in the words of my club coach. "I both hate and like school volleyball. I hate it because most of the coaches aren't qualified enough and they teach you bad habits, but I love it because they whip you into shape. And since they whip you into shape real good, that's one less thing I have to worry about when you get to me!" (Nelson bnalahjfbjdkshiuor) In club ball, the coaches tend to focus more on fine-tuning your skills and working on the teamwork and leave all