Every Contact Counts

When I was in high school, I had a particularly demanding coach.  Hours on the track, hours in the gym, lots of sweating, some crying, and even occasional bleeding.  It wasn’t always pleasant, but it paid off.  While I have many great memories of that time, there are two that stand out more than any today.  

The first happened all four years: preseason camp.  Running from 7 am until 4 pm, we had a lot of time, and we always, always, always drilled and killed the basic skills.  I can distinctly recall running through the passing and setting progressions, two of the most basic skills of the sport, every blessed morning.  As most of you can imagine, it can get pretty boring to go through the same drill every single day, morning after morning.  Especially for high schoolers, who usually think they know everything.  I remember, though, quite clearly, my coach’s voice ringing above the sound of the volleyballs bouncing off of forearms or the floor, saying, “Every contact counts.”  Over and over and over again.  Walking around the gym, saying it repeatedly.  And it paid off.  It turns out that all of those mind-numbing drills created the foundation necessary to win three state titles.  It turns out that the care and precision we took in the fundamentals of the sport made the more advanced stuff, like a first tempo offense, so much simpler.  

The second memory developed from the first.  As challenging as my coach was, he was also willing

to give everything to players who were giving everything.  For me, this resulted in countless hours of him staying after practice to drill volleyballs at me so I could improve defensively.  And when I say countless, I mean at least an hour every day.  (What can I say, I fell in love with the game!)  The contacts from practice weren’t enough for me; I wanted more to get better.  It became a matter of pride: he would finally have to tell me that he was only hitting a set number more, so I had to get all of them or I felt like I’d failed myself.  (Yeah, I was dramatic - wait, I still am.)  Three years of this.  I loved every single minute.

Not surprisingly, life is like this. If we go through the motions on what we think are the mundane things, the big stuff will come crashing down around us.  If I am not willing to make each action purposeful and work to execute it with such purpose, I bet I will see the results of that time and time again.  Maybe not immediately, but eventually.  It is the person willing to take each action seriously and willing to do this every single time who will ultimately consummate the dreams for which s/he strives.

I am incredibly thankful for the sport of volleyball, especially that I fell in love with it when I was young.  So much of what I’ve learned about life, of who I am as a human being, stems directly from my experiences with the sport: how to lead when necessary, how to recover from mistakes, how to take criticism, how to win and lose with grace, how to set goals, how to achieve them, how to work together with people I like or don’t like, how to set priorities and maintain them, how to balance my time, how to deal with pressure, how to work hard, etc.  I literally could type a list as long as my arm.

I don’t know whether it is one of the many things volleyball taught me or if it a result of all that it taught me, but I can honestly say volleyball has given me an internal drive that I do not see in a great many people.  It’s not something I have figured out how to teach or instill in the youth I coach and teach, but it’s something they need.  It’s something we all need.  I am not talking about a drive to succeed in the big things in life or a drive to get better, though they are part of it.  I am talking about the drive to make every action purposeful, even the “little” ones.  I am talking about making each contact count.