Tryouts Over for Another Year!

I think we can all be thankful that our first snow of the season did not hit yesterday. I'm looking out my window in Kirkland and everything is white. DD went to 4 tryouts this weekend: Blaze - hands down the best tryouts we have been to. The facility is great and Mike and his staff are top notch. They cap each tryout session (we're U16) at 30 girls (x2 so 60 try out), split those into groups of 15 and really run them through skills with staff taking lots of notes on each player. Blaze continually finishes well up in Power League and we seriously considered playing there, but the lack of a 17's and 18's club plus the limited schedule, moved us in a different direction. Eastside Volleyball Academy - a brand new club out of Bellevue started by Andrew McAllister who was previously at NW Juniors and BCC. It was a 15's and 16's combined tryout and poor Andrew was running it by himself so he seemed stretched a bit thin, but I will be rooting for him and EVA because it never hurts to have another option on the East Side. We just felt it was too new to start there as a 16. NW Jr's Elite - Say what you will about NW Jr's, but there was something very comforting about their tryout after having been to EVA's. They had lots of staff and Tony does a fantastic job of going through everything for the parents. They really seem to offer the complete package. Didn't seem like a giant turnout, but maybe that was because the Juanita HS gym is so massive. Last up was ITVC - 80 girls. Big change this year appears to be that the Blue Team is cranking it up a notch. Basically the same tournament schedule and price as ASICS. New coach is Danielle Orong who has a fantastic resume and is a fellow San Jose State alumni, so how could DD go wrong?   A year ago, DD signed with Moxie. Last night, we were excited to receive that 10 PM call and will now call ITVC home. Pretty amazing what a year of nonstop hard work can do. Good luck to all the DDs in 2011!

Club Volleyball: Tryout Sunday

Sunday morning. Tired, sore, brain fried, hungry....and I don't even know how Maddie feels! Saturday is in the books and in a couple of hours i will tear myself away from the NFL to drive the 4 minutes to NW Jr's Elite tryouts and then on to Island Thunder this afternoon. Maddie should know where she'll be playing in roughly 12 hours. Once again, I'd like to tip my hat to the folks at Blaze who hands down run the best tryouts we've been to. The reason is that they cap it at 30 girls per tryout, split them immediately into 2 groups and run them through their drills with 2-3 coaches taking notes etc. Now, they run 2 tryouts, but that means 60 girls. Compare that with Sudden Impact who I heard had about 100 girls trying out. Ridiculous. The highlight of the Blaze tryout is where the coach stands on a box on one side of the net and a single girl stands on the other side while they fire balls at her, dump 'em short, hit 'em deep, and the DD is running and diving all over the place. You could tell Maddie was in shape from HS because she rocked it pretty good.

Our other tryout was at Eastside VBA...brand new club and they did not do a whole lot of publicity; (I think they were trying to avoid a cattle call, so not a bad strategy). It was a bit unorganized and there were not a lot of girls there (maybe 20 15's and 20 16's) so everyone got a good look.

Now on to the rest of the day!

Club Volleyball: Day One Tryouts in the Books

So different from a year ago as I was standing along the wall at Moxie tryouts last night and a mom came up to me and asked "so how does this all work? There are so many girls!" And I, being the now worldly club volleyball dad, did my best to explain. Unlike a year ago, the suspense of making a team was lifted early as they pulled Maddie out about an hour in and asked her to come back to Moxie in 2011. Several other 'incumbents' were approached in the same manner, but only a handful of last years team came back for tryouts tonight, so the coaches really will have an opportunity to start from scratch. One of the JV players at LW also made the team and I was very proud of her because Club does not seem to be a big priority for the young Kangs, which is sad, because if half the team was on a club, those 5 wins might have become 8. Moxie did confirm that they will be playing in Power League this year, so all in all, we're glad we went and glad to have a spot SOMEWHERE going into the weekend of more competitive tryouts. One down, four to go. And kudo's to you, Maddie, for missing the midnight Harry Potter showing that all your friends went to so you could be well rested and mentally alert as you head into some of the biggest tryouts of your volleyball career. I am proud of you.

Happy Birthday, Club Volleyball Blog!

Club Volleyball Dad is a year old now! Lots of changes since those first posts leading up to club tryouts for 2009; but the more things change, the more they stay the same, because here we are 12 months later and we are once again only days away from U16 tryouts. We'll be at Moxie, Blaze, NW Juniors, EVA, and Island Thunder. We had a good experience with Moxie last year, but it took a perfect storm of good coaches and good parents pushing to be part of Power League. When I asked the U16 coaches if they would be joining PL and some open tournies as well this year, they said they didn't know. So for now, we'll head to Moxie on Thursday and treat it more like a warm up for the weekend. Maddie has had an idle 2 weeks to recharge her batteries, but now it's time to go out and make a good club. For all of you with DD's trying out next weekend, good luck! And Maddie: "Don't dream it; be it."