One ball, one court, six players, and hard work. That is one way to describe my favorite sports volleyball. The feeling that I get when I play and the excitement that comes with it truly means the world to me. I grew up around the sport with my mom, grandma, and aunt all having played at one point in their life.
My mom was an All-American setter at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. Two of her teams have been inducted into the hall of fame. My grandma played as well in college, and same with my aunt at Missouri Southern University in Joplin. With all of this experience of volleyball growing up, of course, my family wanted me to play. Since I have been five years old, my mom has always had me outside hitting her hardest at me.
As a family when we went to my cousin's house in Joplin, Missouri we would get in a big circle and pass and hit the ball around. It always has brought everyone together as a family.
When I was eight years old, my mom started me out on a rec team. The next year I ended up moving to a competitive team. My first team was originated out of my High School, and it was called the Tigers. This team is where I met some of my lifelong friends. My best friend, Kelly who continued to be my setter throughout middle school and high school. I then continued to move up in club teams and finally played for a pretty good team called PVA which stands for Performance Volleyball Academy. I was an all the way around outside hitter for four years with them. Again, Kelly was my setter. That girl stuck with me through about everything. The type of relationship a setter and hitter have is something indescribable. It is almost like a love hate relationship.
In the offseason of Club there was High School season which the first two years for me wasn't the greatest. After two losing seasons, we got a new coach. Her name was Coach Carver and she was one of the best coaches that I have ever had. She taught me how to be one of the best passers and servers on the court. In my last two high school seasons, our record flipped. During Junior year we made it to the district championship and lost, but it was such an improvement from our past losing seasons. Senior Season came around and we ended up ranked 8th in the state. One game that I will always remember is against our crosstown rivals Lee’s Summit North. Everyone was excited, the crowd was loud and the atmosphere was perfect. Lee’s Summit North was always pretty good, and we beat them in two sets. The best part was that our JV won that night and our Freshman as well. We swept the broncos and it never felt so good.
I never thought that I would become a collegiate athlete, but here I am today playing at Spring Hill College as a libero. My coach in High School, helped me get recruited and now I am living 14 hours away playing the sport I love.
I took a year off before heading into college ball and thought I would not miss the sport, but boy I never knew I could miss something so much. Stepping back onto that court in August, I could feel all of the memories come back that showed me the reasons to why I fell in love with the game in the first place. It is my get away from things in life that are hard, and I know I can always rely on this sport to get me out of painful events in my life.
Since being at Spring Hill College I have realized that volleyball has made me into the person that I am today. Without it, I would be a mess. For one, it has shown me this beautiful school that I love very much, but for two it has shown me that you can’t always get what you want. I have to fight every single day for a spot, and it pushes me to become a better person. Have I made mistakes already this year? Yes, but I have to learn to move on from them and build back to where I want to be as a player on this team. The sport has taught me that no matter what, I have to let it go, push through, and fight back. I am not a quitter, and will never be.
I hope that one day, I can look back on my 12 years of volleyball and realize how much it meant to me. I hope that I can eventually pass on the generation of playing volleyball in my family to my own kids one day. I want them to see the adrenaline rush that I got when I played, and the pain, sweat, and tears that came with it. I want them to learn life lessons within the sport and take them throughout their journey of life. Lastly, I want them to fall in love with the game just like I did.
