Lovesong

I was 11 years old, sitting in a hot and steamy college gym, watching a sport that until then I had only seen played in the back yard at picnics.  We went to watch because my sister had just begun playing for the freshman team and the varsity team had made it to states.  I watched high school athletes throwing their bodies around on the floor, jumping and swinging and celebrating, and cry their hearts out when they lost in the championship.  I fell in love.

It has been a part of my life ever since that Saturday a long time ago.  I watched my sister earn two PIAA silver medals and play division I ball.  I started playing myself in seventh grade, was part of a three-time state championship team, played club ball that took me to parts of the country I probably would never have seen otherwise, and earned a college scholarship to a small school that brought amazing people into my life and made me the woman I am.  I helped manage the newly created men’s program at my high school, preparing me for coaching, which I have been doing in some capacity since I was 19 years old.  I played in co-ed leagues and tournaments as an adult, though not much recently.  I even watched my mom accept a national award for Parent of the Year for it.

It has introduced me to amazing people: one coach in high school who I am not sure realizes that he saved me from myself and another who was willing to spend countless hours after practice just hitting the ball at me to make me better; friends from my high school, club, and college teams who may not be a part of my every day life anymore, but who taught me who I want as well as who I do not want to be; people from adult leagues who, though a continent away, are among my best friends in the world.

It has taught me important things: how to rely on others to make something happen; how to take charge when others are struggling and need someone to look to; how to follow strong leaders who know where they’re going; how to get up and try again when I make a mistake; how to celebrate respectfully when I sometimes win; how to encourage, how to be honest, how to meet new people, how to be comfortable in my own skin.  It has given me a strength I do not know I would have had I not fallen in love with it so very long ago.

It was my passion for a long time.  I ate, slept, and breathed it.  There were days when I spent half a day with it, when I went from one practice to another to another, when I became so gym-drunk, the punchiness brought fits of giggles only a fellow player or coach could understand. 

I spent the past holiday weekend watching my nieces play the sport their mother and I so love for a club in which I once played, my mother once ran as the director, and my sister and I coached.  They are 14 and 11-years-old, and they have the bug.  I see it and hear it in their voices.  If the oldest could play it for 16 hours a day, she probably would.  And they’re good.  Very good.  They work hard and play with intensity and love it, love it, love it.  But as good as they are, what makes me happiest is knowing that they will learn all of the things I learned, meet awesome people like I did, and have countless great memories and experiences to forever shape who they will become.

I debate at the end of every season whether I want to continue coaching because the passion has begun to wane after 26 years.  Every year it takes a little longer before I say yes in my head.  Part of me thinks I continue to coach because I don’t know who I would be if it weren’t part of my life anymore.  Part of me thinks that if it weren’t for volleyball, a piece of my heart would stop beating.  Part of me thinks that a love affair this long means forever, for better or for worse.