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Volleyball coach Jay Mooney believes he is fighting the good fight against sport specialization, which is limiting opportunity and athletic function in our youth. He wants his players to be athletes first, volleyball players second. The second in a four-part series by the Citizen’s Wayne Scanlan.

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Parents often watch in wonder as Jay Mooney conducts a volleyball practice.

Sometimes, volleyballs don’t come into view. He’s been known to have 13-year-old girls throwing a football or playing catch with a lacrosse stick.

This is elite club volleyball?

“You’ve got to address the athlete component first,” says Mooney, head coach of the Ottawa Fusion Boys 17U and 18U teams and the club’s technical director.

“My beef with volleyball has been that in the last 12 years we’ve tried to specialize it, at an earlier age,” Mooney says. “It requires such a mature level of athleticism to be played at the university level, that by bringing the kids in and doing skill work so early, when we know they’re not out playing in the parks developing that other athleticism, it just doesn’t work.”