Personal Narrative: How Volleyball Changed My Life

Senior year is known to be the best year of high school. It's your final year, you're at the top of the social food chain, and for me, my last year of volleyball. Varsity volleyball season starts the first Monday of August, starting a month before school. The team goes to a tournament in Houston, Texas every year and it is always the best weekend of the season. The four days are full of bonding, long bus rides, hotel room talks, and free food. Making varsity for the first time, this is what you look forward to the most. The trip was going amazing, and we blew everyone out of the water on the first day, winning all of our games. That night we had a curfew of 10, a few minutes before lights out, the coaches did room checks to see if we were in bed. Ours went fine, others, however, did not. The coaches walked in on six team members, three electronic cigarettes, and one cloudy room. The girls, four of the six essential to the team, had been sitting in a circle part curfew passing the electronic cigarettes around. The legal age for owning and using an e-cig is eighteen, and none of them were of age. In fact, the youngest was only 15. The girls in the room were all who I spent time with on the team, and I had no idea what was going to happen without them. They were the "leaders" of the team, and

When first learning the different technical aspects of volleyball, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. During my first practice, I had no idea what it meant to be athletic until I realized the necessity of hustling and focusing

It was volleyball heading into freshman year that changed it all for me. I realized if I was going to pursue my dream of being the best libero, I had to work my butt off. It definitely wasn’t easy, I had bruises, scars, and was sore day after day that summer. I still was very frustrated because I knew I could get better but it just wasn’t in God's timing. When it came to freshman year volleyball tryouts I went in calm, because when I’m nervous I don’t play well. I heard from coaches “Great pass, Jamaica!” or “Nice job, Jamaica!” but then it came. The day where we found out what teams we got on. My dream was to make varsity, but that wasn’t the case this year. Will the JV coach pulled each of us into his office and he said to me “You will be the starting libero for JV and for

Every kids dream is become a Professional Baseball Player. I still remember when I first started baseball, I was only 4 years old so young and small. Baseball has shown me how to use my head by focusing on everything. Growing up with baseball has changed my life dramatically, It taught me to become a smarter individual and a better athlete. Baseball has never let me down.

Ever since I was a kid baseball has been a big part of my life. Whether I’m watching it with my dad on tv, or I’m suiting up to play under the lights on a friday night. Nerves had always played a huge part when it came to just an hour before game time. My whole body would tense up and I would feel anxious. This, of course, is a serious problem for any athlete who wants to compete at the best of their abilities. My biggest issue was always playing in the “big game”, or any game that would put an excessive amount of pressure on me. Which, when it came to me, was basically every game I played in.

What I wasn’t expecting, was the fact that I have had to put in more time managing, then I did playing club volleyball. I go to almost every practice, and travel with the team for games. Even though it is a huge time commitment, I became friends with the whole team. I am very busy but I prefer it that way. I love playing volleyball, and I cherish the relationships with the people I have gotten to know over these past few years.

As a child, I grew up playing travel soccer, and it was what my life revolved around. My weekdays were filled with practices, my weekends filled with tournaments. Soccer was all I knew and all I wanted to do. I had dreams of making my high school varsity team, and even one day playing when I got to college. This all changed during one weekend tournament. My team and I were in the first half of the first game that weekend when I was injured and carried off the field. From that point, I never stepped foot into a soccer game again.

would consider myself to be an athletic person, I always have been. I have been played many sports throughout my life beginning all the way back to before kindergarten. They have been a huge part of my life and I have learned so much. These games have influenced my life in many ways and I am grateful for all the opportunities I have been given. I have played many sports including soccer, volleyball, and basketball.

After years of basketball taking up most of my time, I knew that at some point I was going to need to stop. What I did not know, was when that time was going to come. This past year, I have made the bold choice to stop playing. If I played one more year, I felt as if it might ruin basketball for me. Basketball has always been the way I was able to forget about everything going on around me and just focus on one positive thing.

Volleyball has been a large part of my life the past five years as I've played on Greenwood High School's Team. My transition from elementary school to middle involved joining the high school volleyball team, along with two other to-be seventh graders. These past few years have been marked with both struggle and triumph as we experienced three different coaches as the original coach stepped down. This left us with only 14 girls to play with one year, when an average volleyball team plays with 30 girls. We struggled as a team that year but we also came closer together through shared experience, which enabled us to work together even better as a team the year after under the tutelage of our third coach. My ninth grade year I participated very heavily on the team as I played both Freshman and

Many moments from our youth may fade while other experiences remain vividly embedded in our memories. Perhaps because, like a cut to our skin, an open wound, it takes time to heal. At the start of my sophomore year I was cut from the high school volleyball team I worked so hard to be a part of. All my life I have trained to be the best athlete I could be. I joined volleyball at the age of seven with a goal of being on my high school volleyball team. During sophomore tryouts as the final minutes ticked by the coaches started to call individual people in their office one at a time for cuts and unfortunately I was called. The finality of the coach’s words, ‘you’re not on the team anymore’ filled the room as my world fell apart. The practices, the games, the knee pads, the uniform—was suddenly present but

For as long as I can remember, I have always been a shy person and never liked putting myself into social situations. The one way that got me out of my shell was playing tennis. In ninth grade my best friend encouraged me that we play and try it out. As soon as I started playing ,I fell in love with the sport. In my life, I have tried other sports such as soccer and volleyball, but i never stuck with them due to the fact that i just could not connect and get into them. Tennis was completely different.

I have been playing volleyball since I was ten years old. Now that I’m a senior, I applied to be a coach for the seventh grade volleyball team at our local middle school, Taylor. During the first week, I had a small team with nine girls, which was not nearly enough. Tryouts continued and the sign ups trickled in and soon enough, I had seventeen girls and two teams. I was sharing the gym with the sixth and eighth grade teams, so vying for gym time for each team was taxing, not to mention the two games per week for each team. The girls I was working with were scattered in skill level, ranging from beginner to near expert.

Tonight, is one of those nights. One of those nights where I sit down and reminisce about my life around this time last year. Volleyball was my main priority around this time last fall and the only thing I cared about.

Playing on the varsity volleyball team is an adrenaline rush like no other. To be able to play the sport you love with teammates that are like family, in front of a crowd of actual family members is the ultimate feeling. Playing is even better when you, a small town nobody, beat a ranked team in the first set. We had just beaten Humboldt 25-17 and I was on top of the world. We were playing like our lives depended on it and I couldn’t be more proud of the girls.