Southern Elite VBC
Club Director- Bre Barnes
Silver $695 Select $895 Gold $995 Force $1295
Conclusion:
Should you consider trying out for Southern Elite VBC? I have mixed feeling on this. They are worth the fees that is sure but the atmosphere is not healthy for young girls to be in. There are other clubs out there that are competitive yet foster a great attitude and environment for these young girls to learn in.
I had a hard time finding parents willing to allow me to publish their experience with Southern Elite. Many feared their daughters being punished or worse released from their team, if they were ever found out. So I decided to use my own personal experience.
One of my daughters went to both their open gym and their tryout last year. Upon arrival she said she just felt like a piece of meat. The coaches were so short an impersonal compared to other clubs she has participated with. I stayed and watched the open gym. They did not follow HOA rules for open gyms. They separated girls into modified skill level, which is a no no. They took a group and worked with them on setting. My daughter is a setter and every time she asked to join the setters she was told she would get a chance, but they never allowed her to set. Not at the open gym or the tryouts. She ended up playing for PVA as a setter which is a much more elite club, though it too is not without flaws.
The only comments I could get Southern Elite members to allow me to publish is as follows;
"Bre Barnes is a nut job"
"My daughter learned and improved despite our coaches lack of coaching skills"
"We had a good coach, but she wasn't able to bring the girls together as a team"
"The director is really intense, and the overall atmosphere is tense"
"My daughter thoroughly enjoyed her team and coach"
"Our team was very successful and we enjoyed the experience"
Our next review is BVAC. If you have any comments about BVAC please let me know. ClubVolleyballKC@gmail.com
I agree!
ReplyDeleteBre Barnes is a NUT job!
Her contract alone (if you choose to take an offer from her club) should scare any parent from this club. Pay a Deposit - this should already have a parent wondering why. The biggest clubs in town don't force contracts or deposits on you. Her newest contract this last season was if you choose to walk away from your offer after paying the deposit - she is demanding you to pay the full amount owed for the entire season. Good Luck BRE!
If a player wants to walk away and you force them to stay due to the contract - who are you really helping. The player might choose to play poorly cause they just don't to be there. All the parents and players that want to be there are impacted. Let the player leave. You'll have plenty of suckers who will still seek you out.
We did an evaluation/team placement session with Bre. While we ended up choosing another club, I have to say that we loved the session that we had with her! It was part evaluation/part private lesson, and during that 30-45 minutes (we were the only ones there, so it went long), she corrected some things on my daughter that had not been addressed in the entire previous club ball season with another club. She was funny, engaging, encouraging, complimentary when appropriate, and my daughter really liked her. My daughter has taken some of the things she said during that time, and has improved in her own time from those tips—so much so that I'm tempted to take her to more privates with Bre, even though we declined the team offer (but I might feel it could be awkward).
ReplyDeleteAfter the eval, Bre sat down with us and went over all my daughters basic skills, and where each skill (based on things like form, accuracy, effort, and coach-ability) would land in a scale of 1-5. It was really helpful to see how her different skills compared, to see where her strengths and weaknesses were, and what she really needed to work on. My daughter will be a better player for the time she spent with Bre. That isn't to say that she wouldn't get that with any private lesson-- she might--but my daughter did a year of club ball, and has done seemingly countless camps, and this short session was still a top learning moment for her.
We are currently doing Elite open gyms as well. They are different than described above, but maybe it is different with the older girls (they appeared to be run the same as the young girls though). The girls are grouped by age level, not skill or position level. And they work on different skills. I don’t know if my daughter is learning as much as she would in a private/small group lesson environment, but it is getting her court time and ball touches, with people who seem to know what they are doing (I’m sure we’ve all dealt with camps/open gyms where they don’t) so it is a good experience so far and she is having fun. My daughter would play every day if she could, so the Elite open gyms are really an economical way for her to be able to get in a gym every week.
There are other reasons why my daughter chose another club (number of tournaments, fundraising requirements, speaking to other parents about coaching and environment—but it came down ultimately to being my daughter’s choice of at which club she felt more at home), and we are happy with her decision. But I had to share a contrasting experience to the original post here, when it comes to evals and open gyms.
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