I was fortunate this past weekend to participate in the Nationals in Sherbrooke Quebec. I along with my team mates have decided to look upon this event as a lesson in life that came directly from the teachings of our competition. This is not like the wisdom provided by a teacher or a parent, but more like the insight offered in a UFC match where we cannot escape from the cage and the big sweaty psycho keeps kicking our butts.
Looking back some time before the lessons began, there are some great memories. I arrived in Montreal from New Brunswick after a great time at Circle Square thanks to Mrs. Gallagher, and suddenly I was charged to play. My Dad picked me up and we drove for a couple of hours to the hotel. There was no indication that I was totally exhausted from the trip until I hit the hotel and crashed for a few hours. After that I had some moments of total confusion about what time is was and generally what was going on. Maybe that is why I struggled a bit at the start of the first game where the first lesson began.
We should have won, but we didn’t because as a team we are totally unable to chill. I mean we have total panic attacks and completely freak out. That leads to bad passing, bad setting, not great hitting, and even spottier coverage. That leads to a chain reaction from our coach (coincidentally my Dad) that starts with his face tightening up followed shortly by his voice volume rising. This is often followed by someone being called off the bench and another person having a seat.
The real lesson came in the second game when a player I knew from Madawaska – call her Amazon for short – took us apart serve by serve and showed us that we really fail to pass well when under pressure. Well the rest of the day went along that same other even though we improved a lot from the start of the day.
This was a trend that continued the next day despite all of our efforts. We did win a game, and it felt great, but it was a short lived feeling as we fell back into our old ways. The final outcome was that we failed to medal, but you had probably already jumped to that conclusion on your own. However, I think back to the lesson that came out of it and it was overall positive, believe it or not.
I learned that we took a bunch of girls who had little volleyball experience and we worked hard to achieve things we never dreamed were possible. We then achieved the opportunity to attend nationals even though none of us honestly believed we would ever get there. Our coach told us day one that we would be going , but we really thought he might be crazy. Now we know different. We also learned that we can’t sit back and expect to win. We had to go out and take what we wanted because no one was going to just give it to us. These were all great lessons that will take me and my team mates into the next year of play for the Ravens. Anyone want to join us?
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