While most of the country has been on vacation or out of school, we know that Club Directors and club staff have been working hard. Your summer is a whirlwind of beach volleyball, camps and planning for the upcoming season. It is commonly stated: “If you are not moving forward, you are falling behind.” Here are some ways the JVA is moving forward.

In a toast at the JVA Member Appreciation Party in Orlando this past June Travis Shives, Vice President of SportsEngine,  said that the JVA is the “Little Engine that Could”. He could not believe how a staff of 5 could accomplish so much. Well this engine is moving forward.

Most of our programs will remain in place. JVA Education will continue to grow, featuring new Coach-to-Coach Videos and Club Director Interviews, in addition to numerous articles and tools on running a junior volleyball club and the variety of programs to your club from the grassroots level. We will continue to publish our monthly newsletter and begin specializing content sent to our members. We’ve already shared information on the JVA Club Sponsor Program that will give $200,000 back to JVA member clubs this season. Planning is in the works for our Annual Meeting at the AVCA Convention in December.  JVA Events have been posted on AES to open registration in the beginning of October, with the addition of the JVA Kansas City Classic in April. Once your season is in full swing, we will announce our 2018 Athlete Recognition Program.

Planning for this season and the next three years began in a 2-day strategic planning session with the JVA Board and Staff this past May at the JVA headquarters in Milwaukee. We identified three categories of development and growth.

Membership and Marketing

If JVA is truly going to be a voice for junior volleyball, we need to represent the majority of junior clubs in our country. We will quantify the number of clubs in the country. We will continue to look for ways to promote the JVA and increase brand recognition. Valuable partnerships are being developed for this season, and existing partnerships are in discussions for ways to bring additional value to our members.

Zonal member chapters have been developed to provide a pipeline of information from the JVA to our members and, more importantly, from our members to the JVA.

We will also be reconvening our member committees for their help in developing the goals and objectives of our Strategic Plan.

We have three JVA Member Committees:

Education and Resources
Club Management Education
Membership Development

If you are not a member of one of our committees and are interested, please email us at members@jvavolleyball.org.

Education

We will continue to provide valuable resources focused entirely on youth and junior volleyball. In addition we are developing ways to target information to specific member groups. We will work with our committees to define core competencies related to Club Management and provide resources to club directors in those areas.

One of the changes you will see shortly is that we are moving the JVA Spring Webinar Series to the Fall. Fall is the time that the majority of our members are preparing for the upcoming club season. If there is any time of the year that is less stressful, it is September and October.

Events

JVA Events have been integral in promoting the JVA brand and growing membership. We will be defining our goals and criteria related to JVA hosted events, partner events, Challenge Series and President Day Series. In order to sustain our event schedule and provide a higher level of customer service, we are adding two in-house staff positions:

Tournament Coordinator – view job description
Housing Coordinator – view job description

We are accepting applications so please spread the word.

JVA will not be standing still. We are on the move. We are excited and energized with the direction laid out for us. We are looking forward to having you move forward with us.

For more information about the JVA click here. For related reading on JVA news click here.

About the Author 

Jenny Hahn is the Executive Director of the Junior Volleyball Association. Jenny is constantly working with our members to grow and develop junior volleyball in their club and region. Click here to reach out to Jenny about your club.