After my third week, I asked one of the parents
“Who usually sits there?”
She smiled without looking up from tying her daughter’s shoe.
“Whoever needs it.”
I didn’t understand what she meant.
So I asked coach Emma about the chair.
“It started years ago.”
“For what?”
“When someone needed another adult.”
She shrugged.
“Sometimes advice.”
“Sometimes encouragement.”
“Sometimes just somebody who would listen without trying to fix everything.”
I laughed.
“We should put that in the handbook.”
Emma smiled.
“Handbooks don’t listen.”
The weeks passed.
The chair became part of the club.
Nobody reserved it.
Nobody owned it.
It simply existed.
One afternoon I watched Coach Mason sitting there with Coach Olivia.
Mason had recently taken over an older age group and felt overwhelmed.
Olivia listened.
Asked questions.
Shared a story from her own first season.
The conversation ended with both of them laughing.
The empty chair taught me something no leadership seminar ever had.
That realization changed how I approached everything.
Instead of answering first, I asked, “Who has experience with this?”
Instead of solving every disagreement, I asked, “Who else should be part of this conversation?”
Instead of protecting every responsibility, I began sharing them.
Some coaches led clinics I had always run myself.
Parents organized volunteer teams without waiting to be asked.
Athletes mentored younger players before practice.
The strongest clubs are never built around one great leader.
They’re built around ordinary people who believe they’re responsible for one another.
Years later, new families joined the club having never heard the story behind the empty chair.
They simply accepted that every Tuesday someone would sit there.
Sometimes it was a nervous parent.
Sometimes an exhausted coach.
Sometimes a teenager worried about confidence or recruiting.
Sometimes nobody at all.
The chair had never been about sitting.
It was about making space.
Space to listen before correcting.
Space to understand before judging.
Space to admit uncertainty without embarrassment.
Space for people to discover they weren’t carrying their burdens alone.
Volleyball clubs spend countless hours teaching athletes how to call a seam, trust a partner, and move together toward the same ball.
The adults need those lessons just as much.
Self-determination begins when someone decides to show up honestly.
Solidarity begins when someone else pulls up a chair.
Everything worth building grows from there.
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