FOR MEMBERS ONLY : Volleyball Club Teams Succeed, but Detractors Say They’re Too Time-Consuming

Of all the sports played by Orange County high school athletes, few are played as well as girls’ volleyball.

Since the Southern Section started holding championships for the sport in 1972, 13 county teams have made 27 appearances in the divisional finals. You can find numerous Orange County players on the U.S. National team, NCAA champions as well as the Pro Beach Volleyball Tour and in professional leagues in the United States and Italy.

Bev Oden, who led Irvine High School to the 5-A title last weekend, is the nation’s No. 1 recruit. Marissa Hatchett, who led Sunny Hills High to a 3-A championship, is No. 2. Both figure to have an immediate impact on whatever college they choose.

“They make any program they go to an instant national championship contender,” said Dan Glenn, Newport Harbor coach.

Glenn’s top player a year ago, Jenny Evans, and Elaine Youngs of El Toro High, are starting as freshmen for undefeated UCLA, the nation’s top-ranked team.

No one doubts that the reason for the enormous success is a club system that stresses repetition of fundamentals and year-round participation. Many girls are in clubs years before they attend high school. Once reaching high school, they are among the most sophisticated athletes at that level, many able to step right into varsity uniforms as freshmen.

“Most kids coming in are that way,” said Charlie Brande, Corona del Mar coach. “Volleyball is life and death to them.”

But at what price perfection?

Byron Nelson is the father of Sara Nelson, one of Laguna Beach High’s top players and a member of the Mission Valley Volleyball Club.

Byron said he has asked his daughter, a junior, to play other sports, “But she says she doesn’t have the time. I think it’s important for kids to try a couple things, but the clubs don’t give kids that freedom.”

Many club players have the same dilemma. Players such as Oden and Hatchett, each more than 6-foot tall and considered able to step right in and make an impact on any basketball team, have never tried the sport in high school. Full-year participation has become the norm, even though the people who go through the club season--from December through July--admit it can burn them out.

“By April I’m pretty sick of volleyball,” Oden said.

Cari Delson, who played at Irvine High last season and is now starting at Pepperdine, said last year: “After a while, I don’t want to even see a volleyball.”

Some think that kind of commitment is robbing the girls of a full athletic experience.

Among the most vocal critics of the club system are girls’ basketball coaches, whose sport directly follows volleyball in the school athletic year.

The physical and athletic requirements of the two sports--height, leaping ability and quick reactions are at premium--seem to make them complementary, but every year basketball coaches believe they lose potential stars because of the clubs.

“Most of these girls have to make the choice to play year-round by the time they get to high school. You don’t know by that age if volleyball is even your best sport,” said John Koehler, La Habra basketball coach. “All they know is volleyball, it’s their life. I don’t think that’s healthy. I think a kid needs some room to try other things and grow.”

Proponents of the club system say they are offering a proven system of self-improvement.

“Well-rounded? I hear that all the time and I’d like to know what these people mean,” said Jess Money of Volleyball Monthly magazine. “Does it mean to be given the chance to improve to your fullest and to travel to Chicago and Las Vegas to play against some of the best in the world? Does it mean being given the chance to play in the Olympic Festival? Aren’t all of those well-rounding experiences?”

Chuck Erbe, who founded the Orange County Volleyball club, said, “For years, the exceptional female athlete was forced to be a jack of all trades at their own expense. There were so few good ones, she’s forced to do everything and never allowed to become good at any one thing. Why should the opportunities for the female athlete be any different than that for the male athlete? A lot of these girls have to make definite choices for their future. If they want a scholarship, they’re going to have to play club.”

Junior club volleyball--age 18-and under--got its start in Orange County when Erbe, now the women’s volleyball coach at USC, started the Santa Ana Volleyball Club in 1972. It became the Orange County Volleyball Club the next year.

“My focus had always been international,” Erbe said. “The United States had always had fine athletes but our players fundamentals were horrible, so that we were the laughing stock of international volleyball. I wanted to see if American girls would work out 6 days a week to develop the proper skills to compete with the rest of the world.”

The need to constantly practice and refine fundamental skills is the major reason clubs point to the need for their programs.

“It’s a very technical sport,” said Tim Mennealy, who coaches Cal Juniors out of Ocean View High in Huntington Beach. “It requires very specific skills and they require a long time to master. Once mastered, they have to be practice constantly to be maintained.”

Setters must pass the ball a certain way or lose the point. Defenders must be able to dig balls hit at high speed cleanly and accurately. Hitters and blockers must be able to perform without touching the net.

“In volleyball, it’s not only what you do but how you do it,” Brande said.

There are now six clubs serving Orange County--Cal Juniors, Mission Valley, OC Volleyball, Pacific Coast, Reverse X and Asic Tiger. They field teams at varying age levels--most starting with elementary school age--and cost around $700 a year for membership.

Except for Asic Tiger, which is located in Santa Fe Springs and serves the North Orange County area, all the clubs are located in the southern portion of the county, areas near beaches and where, “Volleyball is king,” says Brande, who also coaches OC Volleyball.

Not surprisingly, these clubs have had exceptional success, winning 15 national championships at various age groups since 1975. The Orange County club alone has won 11 national titles.

There are clubs all over the nation and they have become the main recruiting pool for college coaches.

“The only reason a college coach would go to a high school match is out of courtesy,” Money said. “They’ll go to let some player they saw in a club know that they are really interested in them.”

What makes clubs so attractive to college coaches is they can see top players play with and against top players in the positions they were meant to play.

“Good high school players are put at all different positions to help the team,” Brande said. “In clubs you have great players going against great players, and they’re playing where they should. It’s really an obvious choice for a college coach.”

The logic is simple. If you want a college volleyball scholarship, you have got to play club volleyball. Twenty-one of the 22 players on the Orange County Volleyball Club’s top two teams got college volleyball scholarships last season. Brande estimates that in the 7 years he has run the club, 80 players have received scholarships.

Now is the time of year that basketball coaches hear a lot about clubs’ success. High school volleyball has just ended and basketball is set to start its season at the beginning of December. But the club season is also starting.

Basketball coaches not only are fighting the clubs’ success but the cultural hold volleyball has on Orange County.

According to the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations, basketball is the nation’s No. 1 girls’ sport in terms of participation with 16,196 high schools. Compare that to 11,834 high participating in volleyball.

It all adds up to a familiar response by volleyball athletes to basketball coaches who would love to have them on their team.

“I’ve asked Marissa (Hatchett) to come out, but she says she has no time,” said Sheri Lazzarini, Sunny Hills’ basketball coach. “I struggle here, I get a lot of volleyball players who play basketball as freshmen, but the following year they tell me they have to devote all their time to the club.

“They’ll say they love basketball, but there’s a club that can make them the next Marissa Hatchett and they’re gone. There are three other girls on the volleyball team at 6-foot or above and I would take any one of them. My tallest player is 5-9.”

A pattern seems to have developed. Strong volleyball schools many times have weak basketball teams. Sunny Hills went 8-14 last season. Corona del Mar, which has made five appearances in the Southern Section volleyball finals in the past 12 years, has had just one great basketball team (the 1983 Southern Section championships).

“That was a total miracle,” said Dave Heffern, who coached the team.

Heffern had no volleyball players on the team, and only nine players in the program. There were no freshman or junior varsity teams. Heffern used to have to work out with the team so they could go five-on-five.

“I lost 10 pounds that year,” Heffern said.

After Corona del Mar won the championship, Heffern was sure he’d get volleyball players. But when the next season rolled around, he had only 10 players and none were from the volleyball team.

Eventually, Heffern quit coaching basketball because, “I just got tired of going after them (volleyball players). It really was frustrating, there was just nothing to build on,” he said.

Last season, Greg Marshall led Laguna Beach High to its first girls’ basketball playoff berth in the 1980s. And yet, he also has considered quitting.

“I was ready to resign after last year,” he said. “And it’s not getting any easier. It’s just like you’re beating your head against a wall. The best athletes are volleyball players and you can’t get them.”