Sports for the Rest of Us

Hope and Hannah are playing club volleyball this winter. Hope has been competing on the JV team in her high school and her coach has made it clear that if you want to stay on the team, you have to improve your skills and the only way to do that is to join one of the winter out-of-school programs.

I don’t begrudge the fees charged for these programs. The coaches that lead them are underpaid by our public schools as it is and the facilities can cost a lot. I don’t even begrudge the wealthy who can afford the programs. But we were so thankful to find a program that runs at one-fourth the cost – volleyball for the middle class. Even then it is a stretch, especially with two girls involved. We see the twice weekly activity and training as a healthy investment in their lives and we’ll do our best to make it happen for them.

I do wonder how the poor manage it. It seems that all too often the most “gifted” athletes in America are the offspring of the more financially privileged. They are the ones who attend the schools with better programs. They are the ones who can afford all these outside camps and clubs. They are the ones who can foot the bill for top coaches and equipment. Doesn’t make up for true grit and commitment or even raw talent. But 18 years of disproportionate advantage can leave an often unbridgeable gap.

The sports scene is a mirror of what happens in the academic realm. Our kids’ schools are underfunded, but not near so the schools in less endowed neighborhoods, where families cannot make up the difference in fundraising and fees. In China we used to tell our friends how equal America’s educational opportunity is. I’m not sure I believe that any more.

But I am grateful for a volleyball program that exists for the rest of us, at least the middle class rest of us. I love their concept – the guys who run it volunteer their time so that the “rest of us” can afford to play. For more information on this great volleyball program in the Portland area, go to PDX)))VB Volleyball Club.

Now what about the truly disadvantaged – the ones with absent parents, or less interested parents, or parents who just don’t have the means though they are doing their best, or kids who just don’t have enough raw talent, or even kids who don’t have grit? Surely those who have much (folks like us) have an obligation to share with those who do not – our time, our finances, our expertise. Such is the true American dream – that all have real opportunity because we look out for each other. Thanks to Brick Street and David Anderson of PDX)))VB Volleyball Club for looking out for our girls.