My mom has never forced me to do anything for a long time, except for volleyball. Yes, that’s correct — not even piano. I suppose she somewhat threw me into doing sports for a year at a time, but I didn’t object to it. I’m not sure if that counts as forcing me into it.
In any case, perhaps this story is more about my doing sports than volleyball. When I was younger, we had a plastic basketball hoop for kids inside our high-ceiling home. My mom watched me throw the basketball and make it successfully into the basket from across the room. Me being the first child, she thought this was normal.
…until I had a younger sister who kept stepping closer and closer to the net from across the room and still couldn’t make it. When I threw the basketball, it would arc nicely in the air and go into the basket. When my sister threw it, it would go into the ground.
My mom then decided that I had athleticism and proceeded to put me into a bunch of sports, each of which I participated for varying lengths of time: gymnastics and ice skating for a few years, basketball, soccer, and badminton for a year, every summer included tennis for a few weeks and swimming for the entire summer. I did ballet yearly until I entered junior high and my mom asked if I wanted to do it more seriously. I remember not wanting to let it go but not wanting to commit to more than the once-a-week I was going. So in the end, I stopped.
My mom really wanted me to do a team sport because she realized I really don’t like contact sports like basketball and soccer. I didn’t want to push people around. So she wanted me to play volleyball in junior high, and at the time, I was resistant to it. I don’t remember why I told her volleyball tryouts were happening at school (I’m just too obedient a kid, that’s why!), and she made me go.
Before tryouts happened, she had my dad take me to the park to try to figure out passing and hitting, neither of which I was very good. Anyhow, tryouts happened and I made the team. I don’t really remember how the first year went (I was in 7th grade), but I didn’t exactly enjoy it. At the end of the year, my mom asked if I wanted to continue. I wasn’t sure so I said okay.
8th grade was when I started actually enjoying it, and I continued playing through high school, making the varsity team when I was in 10th grade. School volleyball was during the fall and I played club volleyball during the spring. The club team I was on was co-coached by the varsity coach, and one summer, that coach was running a jump camp to help us jump higher so I participated in that as well.
As for positions, I played middle for most of my time except I think in 8th grade, I was chosen to play setter. I don’t remember now whether I just tried it or actually played it, but in high school varsity, I also occasionally played opposite. I was really good at serving (I could jump float serve and I still can!) but really terrible at passing. I would refuse to dive and consequently get my team into trouble because I would fail to get the ball. Oops! I’m still not a fan of diving but I’ll sometimes do it now.
The last year of high school was a bit rough, I remember being benched a lot. I don’t really remember why, but it wasn’t great. Or maybe the times I was benched are just blown up in my head, not sure. Our team was really good, and the club team was fun too, played in tournaments and played on a team with people at other schools, who we then played against during the school fall season.
As I’m writing this, I realize I don’t remember a lot of details of my earlier volleyball life. I just remember it was fun, and it was so much fun that I played intramural and signed up for volleyball PE courses in college. I also tried out for the club team during my second semester, and I wasn’t surprised at the outcome as everyone was so much better than me. Not making the team was probably also a blessing in disguise because that semester, I was so busy with school that I don’t know how I would’ve made time for volleyball and sleep on top of classes (or actually, just the one class that I had a professor who gave notoriously long and difficult projects).
After college, I played open gym in the Bay Area up until I left for NYC, and I stopped during my first year there because I didn’t know where to play. Well, more accurately, I was too cheap to go pay for joining a league to play.
When I started my third job also based in NYC, one of the first activities I found out about was volleyball, and I was so excited because there were two teams — a not-as-competitive team and a competitive one — and both were really good! Apparently if you’re not good enough, the captain of the competitive team will tell you to play on the other team, which I didn’t actually see until I had been playing for quite some time with them.
Since I’ve been playing for so long, I have the need to play with people who know how to play, otherwise I’m just standing around. So I was so very pleasantly surprised and grateful that the work teams were quite skilled! I had a great time playing.
When I left NYC due to the pandemic, I stopped playing, and since I’ve been nomadic, I haven’t gotten back into it per the above. I’m in places for too short a time to find good volleyball players, so I don’t. I’ll still go play whenever I’m in NYC and games happen to be going, but I rarely seek it out anymore. I know it’ll be an activity that I’ll always think about getting back into, but it’ll probably be one that is on the back-burner until I live somewhere for a while again.
After writing this post, I realize this doesn’t really have a moral or lessons learned as I do with all my other posts. I think it’s really hard to put into words what I learned about being part of a team, causing consequences for the team per my actions, and just working together. The teamwork I have learned in my career probably has overshadowed all the teamwork I did in volleyball, but perhaps there were some lingering lessons and habits developed during those days that were helpful. I’m not actually sure, but there it is!
