End of Volleyball?

Before I can delve into our fall sports season I have to give some background…

This fall was quite different for our family as it was the first fall season in five years that we haven’t had someone playing volleyball.  The girls were both iffy about playing this year.  Abigail wasn’t leery of the time commitment it would involve and wanted more time to work and play.  Carly has lots of close friends that participate in cross county in the fall and was tempted to switch for social reasons.  In early August the high school volleyball coach finally posted the dates for tryouts.  Based on the past we knew it would likely start the day we were getting off of our Alaska cruise, but we didn’t know for sure and sometimes tryouts are only in the afternoon, sometimes in the morning.  Anyhow, I’m a planner and like to calendar things as early as possible – the high school coach not so much.  Anyhow, as it turned out tryouts would start Monday morning at 8am – the same time we would be disembarking from our Alaska cruise in Vancouver, Canada – hours away.  I thought for sure though that we’d be able to make it back home before the afternoon session of tryouts began at 2pm so I wasn’t too concerned.  The kicker was that we were heading out of town again on Friday for Labor Day weekend and there were “mandatory” practices throughout the entire weekend.  I knew the coach would not love the idea of having two of her players skip out and not have told her about it ahead of time so we knew we had to email her.  First we needed to know how committed the girls were to playing.  There have always been practices over the holiday weekend.  A think we’ve missed one or two, but we’ve also made special arrangements for the girls to attend and come to the campout late or leave early to make others.  This year however we were camping on Orcas Island which required ferry reservations so there really wasn’t flexibility on coming and going.  So the girls needed to decide if they were willing to miss our annual campout for volleyball if the coach insisted on them being there or if they were prepared to not play. Abigail didn’t hesitate and said she wouldn’t play.  I think Carly hesitated but ultimately didn’t want to miss a fun-filled weekend with friends for a sport she was on the fence about.  Now it was time to see how supportive the coach would be with them missing a few practices…

My email to the coach on August 4:

Hi Coach,

We just noticed the update on the Mount Si Volleyball page listing the dates/times for the 2019-2020 season.  Unfortunately, we will be disembarking from a cruise in Vancouver, Canada on the morning of 8/26 and will be unable to make it back to Snoqualmie in time for the morning session that date.  

In addition, we have a family vacation planned over Labor Day weekend and will be gone Friday, August 30 - Monday, September 2nd and unable to attend those dates.

Please let us know if this will be an issue.  We look forward to another great season of Wildcat Volleyball.

Holly Fletcher (Abigail & Carly's Mom)

And her response which she also cc’d the two other coaches AND the high school director of athletics:

Hi Holly,

It’s always a bummer when vacation ends. :) VB season always starts the same week in August. As always, a reminder, since this isn’t your girls first years in our program, in order to be considered for the team the players must attend tryouts and be at all practices. That being said, we have always had practices over Labor Day weekend and we expect players to attend. 

I appreciate you letting us know of your conflicts but out of fairness to the rest of the girls in the program the same rules apply to all. Must be in attendance to be considered for the team and if they make our program missing practice for vacation is not excused. It’s a standard that we hold and have always held. 

Hope that helps answer your questions, although I know it’s probably not what you wanted to hear. Hope to see the girls on August 26. 

Go Cats! 

Her response was not surprising.  Sure we could have responded back but the girls had already made up their minds that they weren’t willing to sacrifice Labor Day weekend for volleyball so we let it go.  I think the girls wouldn’t still made a team, and they knew that as well, but there would have been kickback from the coach to deal with and possibly needing to sit out the first game as a consequence and that kind of drama wasn’t worth it to them.  I missed watching them play and there’s a part of me that would have liked to see Abigail play in her senior year.  The varsity team actually had a great season.  Abigail had no regrets on not playing volleyball and filled her time with work and friends.  Carly decided to try a sport totally new to her instead...