Safety Harbor Community Center teaching youth to play volleyball

SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. — The Volleyball and Values program at the Safety Harbor Community Center is led by Carrie Vanerio, who developed the program in collaboration with Tim Sattinger and Kelliann Gerlach. The essence of this program is to have fun together, build solid volleyball skills, acquire friendships and make close community connections. The program is also a valuable resource for training youth for higher level volleyball play. Each week, Volleyball and Values rolls out a value lesson which is integrated into the volleyball training.

The goal of the Volleyball and Values program is to have no kid leave the gym without feeling great about who they are.

“We want to transform kids who have little to no volleyball experience into kids with secure spots on their club and school teams,” says Carrie.

When the program first started a decade ago, there were not many choices outside of Club Volleyball and school teams. As a way to introduce boys and girls ages 8-18 to the exciting sport, the program was developed to be both cost and time effective. Volleyball and Values began with one program on Wednesday and has now grown into three programs with two of them now being held on Saturdays. On Wednesday evenings from 6-9pm, they focus on skill building and now offer three volleyball tiers: Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced. On Saturdays, the program has Intermediate Volleyball Game Play from 11:30am-1pm and Advanced Game Play from 1-2pm.

Though Carrie started coaching the program on her own, over the years parents have volunteered their kids to help. Today, she selects players from the program to assist in coaching. They have also had some great assistant coaches who have grown up in the program: Amber Vanerio, Kathryn Warman, Paige Glossup, Kristine Januchowski to name a few. Today’s Assistant coaches are Lexi Werneken, East Lake High School Volleyball player Nichole Giles, Dunedin Highschool player Katerina Cobanaqi, Jojo Wheaton from the Coastal Volleyball Club, and Orkida Ikonomi from Palm Harbor High School.

“Over the years, I have been blessed to have wonderful teen role models to assist with the kids,” Carrie says. “These girls are younger, and the kids identify with and adore them. Coaching with them is a win-win; I get to work with great young women, and they get to earn Bright Future Scholarship community service hours while also learning leadership skills and continuing to improve at the game. We meet monthly over milkshakes to discuss how the program is doing and ways we can improve it.”

Volleyball and Values loves our volleyball community and enjoys working with the residents of Safety Harbor and the Recreation Center staff. They are a friendly community that is always open to welcoming new friends ages 8-18!

For more information, visit volleyballandvalues.com or call 727-642-3974.

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