A single dad's field guide to the volleyball tournament

Walk into a club volleyball tournament as a single dad and you will notice two things immediately. First, you are one of about nine men in a gym of four hundred adults, and seven of the others are coaches. Second, every woman in the building appears to have been issued a folding chair, a blanket and a thermos at birth, and you have a wallet and a phone at 31 percent.

This guide is for you. Not because dads cannot figure it out, but because the moms have had a twelve-year head start and nobody wrote any of it down.

Part one: the game

You will be asked, by your daughter, to have opinions. Here is the minimum.

• A libero is the player in the different-colored jersey. She plays back row only, she is usually the best passer on the team, and no, she is not being punished.
• Rotation is why your kid is suddenly on the bench for three points and then back in. It is not the coach's judgment of her. It is a rule.
• Pool play is the morning. Bracket play is the afternoon. Nobody knows what time bracket play starts, including the tournament director.
• "Side out" is a point for the receiving team. You will hear it four hundred times. You do not need to say it.
• When a parent yells "cover!" they are not asking for a blanket.

Part two: the gym

Convention center volleyball is eight to forty courts in one room, all running at once, with a sound like a hundred people dropping cafeteria trays. You will not find your daughter's court without the schedule, and the schedule is in an app that requires a login your ex has. Get the login. Screenshot the schedule. Then find the court number on the floor tape, not on the signs, because the signs are from a tournament in 2019.

Part three: the equipment

The moms are not better at this. They are better prepared. Copy them exactly.

1. A stadium seat with a back. Bleachers are made of aluminum and spite.
2. A blanket, even in June. The venue is a refrigerator.
3. A battery pack and a six-foot cable. You will be texting a grandparent a video at 4 p.m. with no outlet in sight.
4. A soft cooler with actual food. The concession stand will take sixty dollars from you by noon if you let it.
5. A thermos of coffee you made yourself. Do not trust gym coffee. Nobody does.
6. Ibuprofen. For you.

Part four: the other parents

Here is the secret: the moms want you in the group. The team culture at most clubs is run by a handful of mothers who coordinate snacks, hotels, carpools and dinners, and they have been doing it short-handed. Walk up, introduce yourself as somebody's dad, and ask one of these:

• "Which court are we on next?"
• "Is there a team dinner tonight?"
• "Does anyone need a ride back to the hotel?"

You will have a place at the table by the second match. If you want the introductions done for you, check in at the event in Bleacher Mates and look at who else from the gym has said they are here for Friends. That is the whole point of the Friends lane.

Part five: the hotel

Book through the team block if the tournament requires it. Ask for a floor away from the kids if you value sleep. Learn where the laundry room is, because three days of volleyball produces a quantity of damp knee pads that defies physics. Pool night is covered in another post, but the short version: a parent is on the deck, every time.

Part six: your daughter

She is going to be embarrassed by you at some point this weekend. That is her job. Yours is to be there, to not coach from the stands, to not argue with a referee who is nineteen years old and making forty dollars, and to have a hot meal and a quiet car waiting when it is over. If she loses, say "I love watching you play." If she wins, say the same thing. Those five words have outperformed every piece of advice ever given from a bleacher.

Part seven: you

You are allowed to enjoy this. Not just endure it. The friends you make in this gym will be the people you talk to for the next six years, and some of the best weekends of your life are going to happen in a convention center you cannot pronounce. You will get the chair. You will learn the rotation. By next season, some other dad is going to walk in with a wallet and a dying phone, and you will be the one who hands him a cushion.