UPDATE AS OF 7/13/2024

We are trying a lot of new things this year! our biggest shift is offering a 15u club team. This means we have had to add a tryout in July. This is because NCVA opens the tryout dates for high school girls in July, as opposed to October for girls who are ages 14 and under. It takes a lot of work to make this shift because we wrap up our club season in May, leaving us much less time than usual to prepare for a tryout. We wanted to do this because we have some players on our 14u team who love volleyball and have been with us for 2-3 years, but moving to other clubs would put a hardship on them. Our staff had many meetings considering the feedback of our parents and players on this and we decided to try and at least provide ABV as another option for them to consider next season. We still plan to support some type of middle school age, 14 and under team next season too. That means that if you’re in the 14 year old age definition, you can try out for the 15u team in July, and if you don’t make it, we encourage you to try out again in October for a 14u team.

For 11-12 year olds, we plan to continue to provide weekly classes and we hope to work with Marin Juniors again to provide some type of casual, low-cost, and local team tournaments. We plan to support this with weekly level 1 classes, supplemented by a monthly tournament with modified rules. We think it’s a better option for us than doing an 11-12 year old club season team.

Boys volleyball is growing in our area. We have new boys volleyball programs at both Albany High School and Albany Middle School. We’ve had more boys sign up for our co-ed classes than we’ve had in a long time. I’m using my connections with the AHS boys volleyball program (back-to-back TCAL Champions and top 3 in CIF NCS DIII by the way) to plan some more boys volleyball classes starting later this Fall. The age range will probably be pretty wide so we can include as many interested students as possible.

For the summer, we’ve had a number of challenges due to gym scheduling and our summer staff having more limited time than usual. After recruiting some new coaches, I think we’ve finally pieced together a few opportunities that we hope can encompass most of our students in our community who have been wanting a chance to get in the gym with us. Please check out our classes page and consider our mini-camps and high school tryout prep camps.

I started coaching as my first job out of college over 20 years ago for my old high school. I was never a standout player, but I used what I knew to help students grow their love for the sport. After my first season, I become obsessed with becoming a better coach, so I kept signing up for different trainings around California to learn how to improve myself from coaches at the highest level (Division I college, USA National Team). I would also coach multiple teams a season to try new drills and get more confident in making coaching decisions. And that’s what I continue to do up to today in the limited spare time I have outside of family and work.

I have really been enjoying helping build the skill level and enthusiasm for volleyball in our community. I hope the experiences I have collected can be passed down to our players and I am always truly grateful to be able to be a part of their development.