Personal Narrative : Playing On The Volleyball Team

Middle school is a time when kids attempt to figure out how they fit in, and that is exactly what I was looking to do when I started playing volleyball. I was in seventh grade when I decided to try out, and it was only because my best friend was playing. Little did I know just how organized and complex the game was; I just assumed volleyball was a more intense version of “don’t let the balloon touch the ground.” I never thought that I would become so passionate about this sport that it would have an impact on my character.

It was my sophomore year, and the day had come to find out who made the varsity lacrosse team. We piled into the locker room to discover rows of brand new helmets. The list of the varsity players was written on the whiteboard. The team was excited, the locker room buzzing with noise. My heart dropped as I realized that my name wasn’t written there. My friends were admiring their new helmets and I had to hold back tears and disappointment. I know now that I still had to be developed at the junior varsity level, but it wasn’t easy to understand back then. At practice that day, I played out of pure spite, every move filled with rage. You aren’t good enough, I thought. I left practice that day without saying goodbye to my friends.

As my Varsity baseball team suits up for practice we whip out our “Easton Mako Bats” and our “Evo-Shield arm sleeves.” Everyone prepares for the season as we break in our new 200-dollar gloves. As I Un-zip my “Demarani Bat Bag” I search for the stick of eye black that seems to add spice to my game as I smother it under my eye, to “reflect the sun” of course. Our accessories become a part of our game, and we begin to value them more than the game itself.

All my life I have always had an intriguing interest for baseball, I started at a very young age with tee ball and playing all the way up until my senior year in high school. Even though I’ve played all these years of baseball, I’m going to tell you about my junior year and our championship run. It all started in the offseason, in which we use to get ready for our season in the spring. In the off season we start with throwing witched turned out for to be my biggest conflict, while throwing in the off season I tore a muscle in my right throwing shoulder which was a tremendous setback for me and my preparation for the season. The doctor started me on a rehab program and lucky shortly after my rehab I was ready to get back out there and prepare for my season.

It was June 11th, 2015 and the softball team was headed to Radford for the state tournament. The nerves of everyone was running wild as we all sat on the bus listening to music in our headphones. While everyone sat in silence I could see the on everyone’s face that they were trying to strategize, including myself, on how we are going to win these last two games. The previous year the softball team won the state title. This created a high bar for this team to reach. As we sat on the bus we started talking to each other about how we can remain calm and drive ourselves to do the best that we possibly can. Coach Gaines reminded us, “play every play and at bat like it is the last time you will ever play softball”. As I hear these words echoing over

“You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life”. My dad would continuously tell me this quote during the tough losses and challenges of my high school softball years. During my freshman year, I was part of my school's varsity softball team, the Lady Lions. Being the youngest player on a team of juniors and seniors, it was a profound accomplishment. A few practices into the season, it had been apparent that many of the players on the team had antipathy towards the coach. Having a great relationship with the coach and being the daughter of the assistant coach, consequently, I was stuck between supporting my coaches or becoming closer with my teammates. Ultimately, seven players decided to quit the team- in fact,

As a member of the Varsity tennis team, I am no stranger to facing what seem to be impossible odds. Being a singles player, during a match it is all on me to figure out what is going wrong and make the adjustments to fix it. Halfway through a match, I found myself down one set to none against the seventh ranked team in the state. The break in between sets is time to reflect on the same thus far, and to think about what you are doing right and what you aren’t doing so well. At this point in the game, I was down on myself and I couldn’t get anything in my arsenal of shots going. Instead of continuing to try to hit shots that I hadn’t hit all game, I decided to go back to the basics and try to gain some confidence in my shots. My main goal was

As a child, I attended the Gibson Southern Volleyball Camp every summer, and I absolutely loved it. It was at that moment, at my first camp, I knew I had found my thing. I started out playing volleyball at Haubstadt Community School and I played all throughout middle school, and I loved it. I loved it so much that I decided to tryout for the Gibson Southern Volleyball Team and I was a nervous wreck. I went from believing I wasn’t going to make it to being the only girl from Haubstadt to make the JV team and I even made the team over some upperclassmen. I was ecstatic at first, but then I quickly realized that all of my friends made the team below me, the C team, and I didn’t have anyone on my team. Fortunately, that quickly changed. Volleyball brought me many friendships that I wouldn’t change for the world.

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

“Why would I have to go to bed early for something that wouldn’t need that sort of procedure!”, I nearly screamed at my parents. If you couldn’t tell already, I was really steaming up.

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.

Bottom of the 9th. Two outs. Crack! A shallow fly ball in the air a few feet behind me, I quickly turned around to sprint and catch the ball. I’m looking up as I attempted to track the ball in the blinding Saturday morning sun and bang! As I became encompassed in darkness, my seemingly lifeless body hit the ground. I blacked out for fifteen seconds. I was then helped up by a fellow teammate. The first words to leave my lips were “Did he catch it?” I looked up, but rather than seeing cheerful teammates and fans, I saw faces of dismay. Rather than celebrating or saying “Good game” to the opposing team, I see my coaches sprinting out to check on me. I was stumbling off the field being held up by two teammates as if I were a drunk teenager on New Year’s Eve. They sat me down on the cold metal bench so I could regain my balance. As I began to leave, I was approached by the trainer.

Many people dread Mondays, but I always looked forward to Mondays spent at TOPSoccer. This student-run, community-based program enables children with disabilities to learn the sport in a supportive environment. This is where I met Evan, an 11-year-old with cerebral palsy. Evan was limited in his mobility and had speech difficulties, which made communication trying at times, so forging a relationship with him was challenging; understandably, he wasn't the most willing participant. Over the next four years together, I continually sought new ways to engage Evan, whether pushing his wheelchair around the field house or playing catch. With my encouragement, Evan's attitude began to change. By my senior year, Evan's grinning face and clapping hands

Eleanor Roosevelt once said “You must do the thing you think you cannot do”, one thing that I ended up doing that I thought I could never do is make a travel volleyball team. On November 1, 2016 I tried out for one of the best travel volleyball teams in our area, I could hardly even dream that I would make this team. When I first got to the tryouts they split us into four groups because there were four stations that each person had to go to. I was lucky and got in a group with someone that went to my school. The first station that I went to was shuttle runs. At the beginning of that station one of the coaches (that could possibly be my coach) came and explained what shuttle runs were and how they would judge us based on our skills.

I first started playing volleyball at a very young age. I was in the seventh grade when my volleyball career started. My sister started playing in the seventh grade and I just wanted to follow her footsteps. My seventh grade year was ok because I had just started out and really didn’t know the game. There was A team and a B team, where A team was better than the B team. I tried my best to be on the A-team, but guess where I ended up, on the B team.