Making the varsity team

Question
I play beach volleyball along with indoor. All my friends are starting to specialize. Because i play alot of beach, I feel comfortable with hitting and setting. Im entering shool in the fall as a freshman. Do you think I should pick a position a roll with it and become good or hold out and be ok at both? thanx so much

Answer
Welcome to www.allexperts.com.  It's great to hear from you!

First, specialization at your age is normal around the country.  That you haven't specialized as a rising 9th grader is actually pretty cool.  Almost no girls your age have such a complete game that they haven't specialized.  Congrats!  Most middle school girls believe that if they don't specialize by the 7th or 8th grade, then they won't be good enough at ANY skill to really make a difference on their future teams, and like you said, they'll be only "ok" at a number of skills and not be awesome at any of them.  

I think the answer to your question depends on several things:

Question #1)  What does your high school coach need?  If your high school coach looks at you and says, "Would like to try to be a setter?", you may consider specializing in that this summer.  Of course, go ahead and play beach, but you may want to tell the coaches at camps that you're a setter and you'd like to set as much as possible during the camp.  

Question #2) How much does playing time on your school team mean to you?  Suppose your coach needs a setter, and you say, "I'm not specializing yet," while one or more of your teammates do specialize.  Oh, oh.  Then, when the coach has to pick the top 1 or 2 setters to run her offense, you may not win the setting battle, and thus you may have very limited playing time.  Is that OK with you?

Question #3) What do YOU want to do?  If you don't want to specialize, then don't.   You don't even have to play school ball this fall.  You could just keep playing outdoors and find an indoor adult league.  

Question #4) Looking ahead, do you want to play college ball?  Not playing school ball won't keep you from playing college ball.  However, not playing school AND not playing club will have a huge impact.  First, I don't see how it's possible to not specialize until your 18 and then try to play on a really strong college team.  If you continue to play nothing but doubles, you'll have no positions that you're extremely competent at.  Sure, if you're a freak-of-nature athlete, I guess you can beat other people out in college.  But those "Michael Jordan" athletes are very very rare.  If you want to play college ball, then you need to specialize very soon & play on teams with other teenagers.  

Thanks again for visiting me at www.allexperts.com.  I hope you have time to visit me at www.coachhouser.com.  I think you'll really enjoy the smiling faces.

Later
Coach Houser