“I don’t believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.” — Dear Volleyball. In this story, I will be taking you along with me to an average volleyball tournament and showing you how much work pays off and what actually goes into this sport.
It’s Saturday morning, your alarm goes off at 4:45 because you were feeling motivated. You then click the snooze button because you are way too tired to wake up right now. But then you actually swipe the stop button instead of pressing the snooze button. You then go back to sleep, thinking you will soon wake up 9 minutes later and have plenty of time to get ready. Then you hear your mom come into your room. It’s 5:15, and when you wake up you feel very rushed already, and you haven’t even started getting ready. Sitting up, you slowly turn your head to see your alarm clock….. You then see that the clock says 5:15. You sprint out of bed, then put on your clothes that you had set out last night. First, you put on your Nike spandex shorts, then you put on your very cold jersey because the material is made of polyester, you then put on your sweats and blue hoodie with your team name on it. You then rush to the bathroom. It’s 5:22 and we have to leave at 5:40. You hurry up, brush your teeth, and start brushing your hair. It’s very knotty because you had a rough night’s sleep. It’s finally brushed and you spray very cold water in your hair, brush back your hair into a ponytail, and put a braid in your ponytail. It’s 5:27, when you get the toaster out to make avocado toast. You also get out the bread, the everything bagel seasoning, and lastly the cut-up bacon. You put your bread in the toaster, and while you are waiting, you put your phone and snacks in your backpack. The bread pops out of the toaster and you then spread your avocado, crumbled bacon, and top it with everything bagel seasoning. You put it in a small storage container and then by this time it is 5:35 and you are already ready and on time, YESSS. You hurry up and put your shoes on, and then you see your mom all dressed and ready, and then head out the door. By the time we leave, it is 5:41; on time but in a rush. Now the journey continues when we get there.
It takes exactly 2 hours to get to the volleyball center. You finally arrive at 7:45 and your check-in is at 8:00, but it is always good to get there on time. You walk in the very very cold weather all the way up to the doors because your dad decided to park 1,800,000,000 miles away, jeez. You walk into the doors and the reception lady tells you that you are on court three. You get through the crowd of people and finally get to your court. Two of your teammates are here, so you start to put on your warmup and get ready for the games. The first game comes by you at a breeze with a win. The second game feels more like a warmup, and it’s time to put your game face on. The last game of pool play and you are about to lose, but you hype your team up that we really want this win, and we need to prove who wants the win more. We have an hour lunch break, but we always stay on our toes. Light meals and no messing around. The time comes where this really does matter, and we are doing our 3-minute warmup drills. We won, but it was a close one. It’s now the semis and we know if we win this game, we are guaranteed a medal, but we are reaching for higher goals than that. It almost got away from us but we pulled through. All of us are very tired, but this has been our goal the whole season, so we push through any thought in our mind. The first set we were not in the right mindset, and every point just flew by us. 2nd set and we get back up, but this last set is what determines it all. Are we going to come home champions or the first losers?. We got it, and you are so happy that your jaw starts hurting because you are smiling so much. Time to go home.
We finally get to the car and put all of our stuff in the back, of the car and we head off for home. It is a long way home, but you can barely tell because you were asleep the whole time. We finally get home, and you eat, but you can’t quit checking out your medal. In the morning, you almost wear it to school because you are so proud of what you and your team have achieved, even if it had ups and downs, you left everything on the court.
The reason I wanted to share this amazing story was that it shows that “ If you got a dream, chase it because a dream won’t chase you back” – Cody Johnson, and I like living life every day is that volleyball game.
