5 insights to know if you want to play in college
by Jeff Smith
I’ve learned a lot about college volleyball the last several years. My two daughters played collegiately (one still does), I worked as an assistant coach for a local college program, and I’ve coached a number of athletes who’ve gone on to compete at the college level in Division I, II and III as well as NAIA and the junior college circuit.
The lessons I’ve learned as a club director, coach and parent have helped me see the college volleyball scene more clearly than when I first joined the coaching ranks 23 years ago. Hopefully these realities will help you as a parent, as an athlete thinking about college volleyball or as a coach who wants to work the collegiate ranks someday.
The main lesson I’ve learned is an obvious one:
1) Earning a spot on a college volleyball team roster is hard.
Did you know that only six percent of high school volleyball players make a college roster? That’s about one out of every 17 high school volleyball athletes. That includes every level of college, from Division I (Stanford and Wisconsin down to the smallest D1 schools) on down the line.
There’s tremendous competition for roster spots, even for small colleges. I assistant coached at Wheaton College in 2018. Wheaton’s enrollment is 2,850 students, yet our volleyball team was comprised of athletes from California to Florida, from Arizona to Virginia and all in between.
College rosters are filled primarily by the top high school players. At Wheaton College most of our 19 players were first-team all-conference and all-area selections their senior year of high school. A few even earned all-state recognition. And this was a tiny college at the DIII level. The competition for landing a coveted college roster spot is intense. You have to commit yourself to developing your skills and body to maximum effect and beat out a litany of other athletes for these coveted spots.
2) Earning playing time on a college volleyball team is even harder.
The average college volleyball program roster features 16 to 20 players. The reality is only 9 or 10 players earn consistent playing time in the team’s rotations. That means about half of the roster sees little playing time in matches. To earn time on the court in matches takes tremendous commitment, skill, perseverance and sometimes fortunate breaks for you, such as an injury or two at your position.
The truth is nearly everyone on the roster is battling for playing time, so competition for spots is higher than what you’re accustomed to seeing at the club or high school levels.
3) The level of commitment demanded of college players is much higher than club or school.
As a first-time college assistant coach, I was impressed with the amount of time, effort and sacrifice that the athletes invested in our program. A typical week for these athletes was unlike anything they’d experienced at the club or high school levels.
A couple of years ago, my assistant coach was a former Division I volleyball player. She said the first month of preseason college volleyball was so grueling to her as a freshman that she thought about quitting nearly every day — and some of her freshman teammates did in fact quit. The demands of the college volleyball schedule were more challenging than she’d ever faced before.
Here was a general preseason practice schedule at Wheaton and at another local college, Judson:
Monday: two 2 1/2- to three-hour practices plus weightlifting, conditioning and team meetings (typically 8- to 10-hour days)
Tuesday: two three-hour practices plus weightlifting, conditioning and team meetings
Wednesday: same
Thursday: same
Friday: same
Saturday: one practice and team meetings
Sunday: off to rest and recuperate
Monday: rinse and repeat
Once matches and classes began in late August, the schedule changed but was still loaded.
Monday: 2 1/2-hour practice, weight training and team film work on next opponent
Tuesday: away match — leave at 3:30, arrive at 5:30 (some away matches were at conference foes in Wisconsin, Indiana or Iowa), quick snack, warm-ups, match, post-match dinner on the road, arrive back on campus as late as 11:30 or midnight
Wednesday: 2-hour practice, team film work on next opponent and weight training
Thursday: home match — arrive in gym at 5:00 for team meeting, stretching, warm-ups and match that ends around 9:00
Friday: 2 1/2-hour practice and weight training
Saturday: away match — leave at 9:30, arrive at 11:30, stretching and warm-ups, match at 1:00, leave the gym at 3:30, dinner on the road, arrive back on campus at 6:00 or 6:30
Sunday: rest, recuperate and cram in a lot of schoolwork
This schedule ran from late August to mid-December at Judson, and it was just as intense for the reserves who rarely played as it was for the starters. It required devotion and excellent time management skills, especially for juniors and seniors tackling demanding schedules for their majors.
Even the off-season training schedule is challenging. The volleyball players at Judson University in Elgin will be doing a mix of weight training, conditioning and skill development for four days a week from January to April. There is no real off-season for college volleyball players.
At the community college level many college programs have off-season training as well. College of DuPage, where my younger daughter played for two years, trains its athletes twice a week from January to April, culminating in a Saturday off-season tournament in Ohio, and twice a week in June and July to gear up for the next season. College volleyball is nearly year-round at all levels.
4) If you love volleyball and earn playing time, playing collegiately is the most gratifying segment of your volleyball playing career.
The key here is love. If you love the sport, playing college volleyball is satisfying in many different ways. You get the opportunity to play volleyball at the highest level. You get to compete against the best competition you’ve ever faced. You get to represent your university on the court. You get the invest the most focused time and training into your development as a volleyball athlete. You get to test your limits as an athlete with the most concentrated training and competition you’ll ever tackle. You’ll get to travel to tournaments and opposing colleges around the region and even across the country depending on your school. You’ll get to develop friendships with teammates who share your passion for the game and with whom you share long bus rides, overnight trips to tournaments, practices, matches and team bonding.
The key is you have to be all in. When it comes to commitment, you’re either in or you’re out. There’s no such thing as an in-between commitment. Coaches will cut athletes whose dedication isn’t 100 percent.
You also have to train yourself to think beyond today. As a freshman or sophomore, you might find yourself buried on the bench behind a junior or senior. If you focus solely on the reality of today, you’ll get discouraged and want to give up. You have to be able to see beyond your current situation, think about future opportunities and possibilities and keep improving your skills, your volleyball IQ and your body for when opportunity knocks again in the future.
And that future could be sooner than you expect. I also learned this as a college assistant:
5) College head coaches are highly motivated to win and will bench players in a heartbeat.
I still remember one of my first matches as a college assistant. We lost a tight first set to the conference’s first-place team and then were struggling in the second set when, during a timeout, the head coach asked us as assistants a question that surprised me. “Jess is really struggling. Should I pull her from the match?” Jess was our all-conference libero. Yes, she wasn’t playing well in the back row, but she was one of the top liberos in the league and our best back-row player by a wide margin, and yet the head coach wanted to take her out of the match against our toughest opponent to date.
This moment repeated itself a few times during the season and taught me a lesson. College volleyball is a results business, and no one is immune to being benched or subbed out in a heartbeat if it means improving the team’s chances to win. All playing time is earned and must be continually earned over and over again throughout the season. Playing time is a privilege, not a right.
Jeff Smith is Serve City’s club director.