WIVBCRAZY- Are the fees at your club less this year over last? Has the club reduced it's cost due to the saving of not attending USAV Qualifiers?

I don't know if this is typical, but our club fees are separate from our travel/tournament fees. So, our club fees are unchanged (about $700) which includes uniforms, warm up, practice gym time, coaching, position practices, and local tournaments (like Power League).

Then we pay separately for travel tournaments. They take the total cost: hotels, tournament fees, lodging and meals for coaches (players need to get themselves to the tournament) and divide by the number of players. This year our total fee was $250 for four travel tournaments. Last year it was a little more - $400 (for three travel tournaments but about the same number of total nights because the qualifiers were three nights vs. the two for most of the JVDA tournaments) .

The real savings for our family was the airfare vs. driving. We are driving to all the tournaments this year vs. last year, we flew to two tournaments. That was probably a family savings of $1200. A lot of this is because three of us go to the touraments (player, mom and dad).

Honestly, I don't really care about the savings (I know that sounds bad). But, we only have one child and it is a lot easier for us.

I do think that the proposed USAV open qualification process where you only got two bids per qualifier would have gotten brutal from a travel perspective. I know we would have scheduled three qualifiers, just to make sure (and we were a top five team last year at JOs and added new players this year making us even stronger - so please don't say we are a marginal team and shouldn't be in open anyway). That is a lot of school to miss.

I tend to think that if USAV would have not proposed the new open qualifier process and instead expanded open to the top five teams per qualifier, the JVDA would not have boycotted. I also think that if they would have kept the field the same but said "only one open qualifier per team" and then seeded the qualifiers to divide up last year's powerhouse, the JVDA would not have boycotted. The JVDA has other concerns, but the open qualification proposal really sent them over the edge. Just my hypothesis.