If you take care of your kids’ best interests, the financial stuff takes care of itself. Built on that foundation of personal development, it is important for club owners to make savvy business decisions that ensure their club’s financial health.

Take membership for example:

As you can see from the above spreadsheets, a child joining your club as age 10 would generate $20,440.00 of revenue over their club career. Comparatively, a child joining your club at age 15 would bring $10,680.00 into your club.

Besides the obvious economic advantages, there are other important reasons why your club is advantaged when it attracts a younger clientele as delineated in the following bullet points:

  • Brand preference. In many cities, there are several clubs vying for the available pool of talent. By capturing a child’s allegiance, first, you are given the first opportunity to win that patron’s loyalty through your efforts. This is the same reason why you see so many companies targeting their advertising to young people – they are trying to gain a forty year customer.
  • If you believe in your training methods and club culture, you can begin molding your young person into the type of player and responsible adult you want while they are very malleable.
  • Every sport is competing for our young peoples’ allegiances. We believe that volleyball is the greatest sport on earth and we want our youngsters to get “hooked” on volleyball so that they can receive all of the blessings that the sport provides.

So if you are convinced that attracting young kids to your club is a key to long run success, then you must ask yourself if you are doing enough to introduce your sport to the players of tomorrow.

There are numerous ways that your club can introduce the sport to the youngsters in your community. Sadly, if we do not do this at a club level, it might not get done because fewer and fewer elementary schools are fielding volleyball teams. If we clubs do not fill the breach we could lose a generation of kids to other sports before they have even had a chance to try volleyball.

One of the best times to offer an introduction to volleyball league is in the fall for a couple of reasons. A fall league naturally leads into your winter club season. If you instill a love for the game in the fall, the kids will search for an avenue to pursue their newly found passion in the winter. We make our fall league very inexpensive and do not even care if we make a profit. Our primary objective is to win over new kids to our club who will want to play through high school or, even, college.

Have you ever walked into a grocery store to buy milk? Where is the milk located? It will always be displayed on the far back wall of the grocery store so that you have to pass thousands of products begging you to be bought. If you are like me, you will, too. Stores use milk as a “loss leader”. They do not make money on milk but, instead, use it as a magnet to get you into the store where you will impulsively add more items to your shopping cart.

A fall volleyball league can be thought of in the same way. Do not worry about making a short term profit. Instead, make your emphasis cultivating a love for the sport and winning a lifetime convert. You might have noticed that if an elementary aged girl finds a new passion she will tell her friends in person and via social media. There is no better advertising than personal endorsements.

You can begin promoting your fall league at your summer camps, on your club website, via twitter and snapchat, emails, yard signs and finding advocates at all the area elementary and middle schools to help you spread the word. These advocates could be coaches, teachers, parents and players in your club already. You could even do a demo at the school with your 11 or 12 year old club team.

In summary, introducing young kids to our sport is vital to the long run success of the sport and your club. From an economic standpoint, we have documented why it is important financially. But far more important than that, you might be changing lives for the better by cultivating a passion for a sport that will be lifetime in duration.

Below are a couple educational resources for growing your youth program. Additional articles, videos and webinars are located in the JVA Members Education under the sections of Player Development, Coaching and Business.

Click here to view more education on running a volleyball club.

About the Author

The author, Tim Kuzma, is an entrepreneur and registered Certified Financial Planner. He is a graduate of The University of Michigan, where he played basketball, and is, also, formerly a part owner of Munciana Volleyball Club.