The Club Cruz Volleyball Academy is a year-round program that focuses on teaching fundamental skills in a non-competitive environment.
The goal of the Club Cruz volleyball academy is to deliver the quality coaching that helps young athletes to build a solid foundation for playing the game in the context of having fun.
All of the core skills are taught in an environment that is fun and supportive without competition. Players will learn hitting, setting, passing, serving, and more with an emphasis on making sure the core technique is correct and that bad habits are addressed early. This lays the necessary foundation for the game if the player wants to go to higher levels.
Middle School
Many of the middle school teams in the Santa Cruz County area are quite competitive. On the one hand it is great that so many youth players are interested in the game, but the challenge is the quality of skills required to make some of the teams have become higher over the recent years. It would be great for these younger players to be able to simply tryout of the team and make it, but this not always the case.
The Club Cruz Volleyball Academy recognizes that the there are middle school players that would like to advance their skills ahead of the tryouts, typically held in January. Our Fall and Winter Academies can provide some support for these players.
Players that are on the middle school teams also utilize our Winter Academy to supplement their training. Sometimes the schools are only able to secure parent volunteer coaches, and additional professional instruction from Club Cruz coaches has been helpful to those in the past in these situations.
Finally, we have found that many players that come off of their middle school team at the end of the season, desire to keep playing the game. If they haven’t joined a club team in the previous November, our Spring Academy is a great option for them to continue touching the ball, developing skills and playing the game.
Volleyball Academy students are placed into groups based on their ages/skill levels.
We have will have a number of different players having come to the game at different ages and have different skills at the point they join us. We will divide groups into players that have both a similar skill set, and a similar age range. We try to balance the “competitive slope” for each player so that they are challenged, but we also want players to be safe, so even the highest skilled player that might be very young won’t go up against a similarly skilled player that is several years older and with a greater physical presence.
Additionally, we find that regardless of skills, sometimes players just want to do the program with a friend. We want to support this, so we will check in wtih both the players and the parents to make sure that friends with different skill sets are ok playing together.
If we have placed a player into a group where the player is not comfortable we need to know. We constantly check in with players to make sure they are comfortable with their playing group, but we have learned that they may say yes to us, they might have a different feeling when discussing it with parents at their home. If this happens, please let the coaching staff know and we will get them placed appropriately.
General groupings.
We often have 3-5 different groups of players, depending on numbers for a given session. Generally we place players into the following types of groups:
Group 1: Beginner (8 yrs – 13 yrs); <1 yr experience)
This group is designed to introduce basic skills to student-athletes with limited experience. Under well-structured instructions, students learn warm-up routines, basic volleyball movements, focus on passing, serving and an introduction to setting and spike approach.
Group 2: Intermediate (10 yrs – 16 yrs); 1-3 yr experience)
This group helps students to become confident in their passing and setting, increase the pace and movement of balls during sessions. Spiking will start to be combined with the approach. Students understand warm-up exercises and contribute during stretching time.
Below are the links to the details of our upcoming sessions:
