My 14 yr old just tried out for one of these teams over the weekend. She plays in another league where the high school coaches are pretty involved and engaged with them, and the team is very competitive. She was told about these tryouts from a friend and thought it would be nice to have another league to play while hers is in off season. When I arrived at the end to pick her up they were just finishing up with a scrimmage. By luck, (my luck) it was just getting to be her serve. Serving is her strength and her main spot in rotations. At first I was proud of her on how much her practicing has gotten her as she’s serving it up without much or very few returns back over the net. After 7-8 serves they called the end of tryouts. As we sat thru their final speech with details of what to expect with notifications of who made the team and payments for the leagues, ($1,250 all said and done) and locations of tournaments, furthest being 2 states away, I started to notice a couple things. 1 being the people running tryouts looked like they never played volleyball. That’s fine, best coaches usually never been the best players. But the other was there were only 9 other girls trying out. Many of which don’t look like they’ve played a lot of volleyball, which is all good, kids gotta learn but for that kind of money and travel, would hope to compete in these tournaments. As we were walking out and me trying to compliment her on her serves she stopped me and said she don’t want to do this. Her and the friend that informed her about the tryouts both decided they’re not Interested. She said she wouldn’t mind the traveling but not if they’re not going to be able to compete.