I could use some advice! My 14-year-old daughter is going into high school next year. Over the years, I have always had the stance that I don't care what activities she does, I just want her involved in something outside of school. She tried many sports and clubs over the years, and absolutely fell in love with volleyball 4 or so years ago. She is far from the best player on the team, but she did make her 7th and 8th grade school teams, and played on a regional club team this winter. She has honestly been thriving since playing volleyball, and I have never seen her as happy as she was playing on her club team. It's something she has been putting a lot of time, effort, and (my) money into.
Here is the problem - she was not nearly as happy playing on her school team as she was on her club team, and when I asked about it, she told me it was because of the other girls. There are a couple of mean girls on the team, and overall it's a group of girls that have known each other since kindergarten and just overall don't get along that well. She has mentioned a couple times that she didn't think she wanted to try out for the high school team because she is worried it will end up like her middle school experience.
I am encouraging her to just give it a try for one year because 1. In my experience, everything from middle school gets better/more fun once you get to high school, 2. Hopefully they'll all outgrow some of the mean girl-ness and 3. There is another group of girls from another middle school that feeds into this high school, so it won't just be the same girls.
She is not really pushing back on my wanting her to try out, but she is still making comments about how she really doesn't want to.
As a parent, I want her to do it since it really is the only activity she does (and playing for the school team is WAY more affordable than finding another club to play on during the season) and also I think it is a great learning experience to be able to work together on a team with people you don't necessarily like. However, her years as a kid are numbered, so is it worthwhile for her to spend half of her freshman year forced to be miserable if it is as bad as she thinks it will be?
What would you do in this situation?