Thursday, October 1, 2026
When North Shore Volleyball was created by parents in the North Shore community last year, its mission was to provide more opportunities for girls in the school district to play the sport and improve their skills. North Shore Volleyball offers several programs, the latest addition being a club team registered with USA Volleyball.
With only a seventh-grade USA club team right now, the program remains limited, but Coach Allan Wright said more teams could be added next season. This year, coaches had to be certified by USA Volleyball, the national governing body for the sport, with training from the U.S. Center for SafeSport, an entity dedicated to abuse prevention.
The club team then had to be registered with USA Volleyball and send invitations to interested players. Those players also had to register with USA Volleyball. The team must register for each tournament and submit its roster.
The club team practices twice a week for a total of three hours, twice the amount that North Shore Volleyball’s Catholic Youth Organization team practices.
“Volleyball is way too difficult a sport for that really to take much,” Wright explained. “So, it was very recreational, and anybody who was serious about it essentially had to leave our area and go join a club somewhere else.” He added that if CYO players joined
club teams elsewhere, they would be split up, so creating their own club team provided the opportunity to keep the team together.
To keep parents from having to drive far for practices and tournaments, the club team pulls players only from North Shore and participates in local tournaments sanctioned by the Garden Empire Volleyball Association. USA Volleyball also offers tournaments that require teams to travel. Wright said keeping practices and tournaments local is another benefit to having formed the club team.
At tournaments, the club team plays against others of similar ability level. North Shore’s is among 80 teams in its age group. At the end of this season, North Shore was ranked 20th, determined by win-loss record as well as whether it defeated teams of higher or lower ability levels.
“They try and put us with other teams that are relatively similar to us,” Wright said, “so the games are all competitive.”
Tournaments by USA Volleyball and the Garden Empire Volleyball Association are day-long affairs in which teams play multiple games. Players also learn how to be assistant referees, score keepers and line judges.
“I’d rather not be doing (those jobs), but it’s not the worst thing,” joked Wright’s seventh-grade daughter, Sydney. “The volleyball is worth it.” She added that working games gives players an opportunity to scout out other teams’ abilities before playing against them.
Sydney started playing volleyball in third grade. She said she enjoys playing in USA tournaments because of the opportunity to play against so many other strong teams. North Shore won its last tournament on April 12, which Sydney described as “really fun and exciting.”
“We’re playing against better teams,” she said. “So, it’s encouraging us to be better and practice more and play to the best of our abilities.”
Wright said that a goal of the club team is to prepare players for high school volleyball at North Shore and encourage them to continue playing.
“There’s a lot of turnover in sports at this age,” he said, “where girls are now deciding, ‘Oh my god, I’m busy,’ or ‘I don’t like it,’ or ‘The coach is too hard on me,’ or ‘I’m not good enough,’ and so my goal is to keep as many girls as possible playing for as long as possible, because as we all know, sports is great for kids. So, if I can make it fun, they can keep learning then and they stay with the program.”
Wright said the plan for North Shore Volleyball to add more USA club teams would include a second team of current seventh graders, one for sixth graders and one for fifth graders. This expansion would happen next year, resulting in two eighth grade teams, one seventh grade team and one sixth grade team. Wright described growing from one to four teams as a “big deal.”
He also expressed pride in his USA club team in its first season, having been ranked 20th among 80 teams.
“That was, for me, a big, big takeaway,” Wright said, “that what we’re doing is working at least for this team, for this year, and we’re earning the respect of the other clubs, even though we’re not operating at their level, with their size or their geographic goal.”
