Volleyball

Maddie made the freshman volleyball team last year. We were both thrilled. Overall it was a good experience. She made new friends, had something to do (practice was every single day after school on top of 2 games a week). It was such a better experience than when she was playing for the city rec team. It wasn't perfect by any means, she got to play in every game but wasn't in for long which was an annoyance. She wasn't played to her true potential. Unfortunately Hurricane is still a small enough town that if you don't have the right last name you don't succeed in sports here. But their team was undefeated the entire year. We even won regional. If Freshman went to state we would have gone! It was exciting. 

This past January she signed up to play in Club. It cost us $400 which is quite a bit of money. We were pretty disappointed when we discovered that she wasn't going to be put on the same team as her other volleyball team mates. 9 of the 12 girls were put on one team with the JV high school coach as there Club coach. Maddie was put on the "upcoming" Freshman team. The other 2 girls of the original 12 were also put on Maddie's team. The team was then filled with 8th graders. 

There's nothing wrong with 8th graders! Maddie was an 8th grader. The problem we quickly ran into was that these girls had only ever played for the rec teams. They had never played a real high school volleyball game. They had only practiced once a week during the 6 week volleyball rec season, not every single day for 10-12 weeks. All of our games were against other freshman aged girls. Our team was 8th graders, we had different rules and a different way of playing than what they knew. It didn't help that our coach was a volunteer mom who hadn't played since college. Her daughter, Jo, was one of the freshman put on the team. Jo didn't want to play volleyball. Her mom was forcing her too. Our coach didn't keep up with the high school rules and had a hard time following them. In fact we were the only team participating that didn't have a Libero because when "she played" they didn't have that position. We had games every other weekend in the Salt Lake area. We hated it. It wasn't fun having to pay for a hotel and food every other weekend and then loosing every single game! 

This is Maddie May Heider and Maddie Mae Heaton. Maddie and her mom, Tonya, was our lifesaver. The Maddie's were both on the Freshman team together and then dumped to the 8th grader team. We usually took turns driving up together and then splitting the cost of the hotel room. We had a lot of fun when we were together.  

So each tournament had 5-7 courts. Each court then had 5-6 teams assigned to that court. Those teams played against each other on there assigned court. This was called the bracket. Then the top playing teams from each court were put together to play in a tournament. 2nd best, 3rd, and down the ladder were put together to play against each other for the tournament.  We lost almost every single game so quite often was playing for the copper trophy.  There were 2 times that we came in 2nd to last during the bracket that put us in copper division but then lost the first game in the actual tournament.  

Because we mostly took last place in the bracket we got to know the other teams like us pretty well. There were only 3-4 of them and there teams were made up of all 8th graders. They couldn't rotate or keep track where they were suppose to be. They were more concerned with their cheers I think. We usually won by 15-20 points every single time. We didn't have to try very hard to come in first place against them. Our last tournament our girls didn't even really try! We knew we were going to win that Copper Medal. We had already played this team 5-6 times. Sure enough we won, like 25-6 

For fun after the rest of the team left these 2 goof balls wanted this picture. We are #1 of the LOOSER tournament. So funny! 

During the summer we learned that our club coach was hired on for the Sophmore high school team. When Maddie participated in the summer games she saw "the writing on the wall". She came to me and said she wasn't going to try out. She knew she wouldn't make it. There was already talk of who was going to be on JV team and who was staying on Sophmore team. The problem is that the JV team is all Sophmore's. So to fill the actual Sophmore team the coaches would fill it with the upcoming Freshman, those 8th graders on our club team. Maddie just didn't want to deal with all the drama that came from the Club team. So she didn't try out. Sure enough what Maddie had thought she saw during summer came to pass. Our other Maddie tried out and didn't make the team this year either. Again something we saw coming. 

She say's she misses being with her friends everyday but that's about it. She "hears" about the drama at school with the girls and coaches and is so glad she is not a part of that.