By Zac Clark
See the issue: October 2008

Playing for your high school volleyball team may be lots of fun and afford you more playing time, but your best chance of getting offered a college scholarship is by competing at the club level.

The problem with playing only for your high school is that the college season runs at the same time, making it difficult for college coaches to get out and scout talent. The club season, however, begins after the high school season is over. Not only is club competition a step or two above high school, but the exposure—through national tournaments and other club events—is much broader and more consequential.

Rick Welch, director of the Premier Volleyball Club in Omaha, Neb., estimates that 90 percent of college players are recruited through club teams. “The qualifying events, where teams can go in a convention-style atmosphere and play, have been a big draw for college coaches from a recruiting standpoint,” Welch says. “In the electronic age that we live in now, all of the information about players can be downloaded into PDFs, so that if [coaches are] looking at a player, they can find out what court they’re playing on, who they’re playing, [and] what time they’re playing—[and] so they can see a lot of athletes in a short period of time. That’s been a big help on the college scene as far as recruiting [is concerned].

“What we try to do with our club is to get local college coaches [to] do clinics for us,” Welch says. “They can explain to the student-athlete[s] what they’re looking for and what the student-athlete[s] can do in regards to preparing themselves.”

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