Savannah T

Volleyball 

Volleyball is my passion; it drives me in everything I do. It all started in sixth grade, when I attended a summer volleyball camp run by Roanoke Catholic. I have always been tall for my age; therefore I was placed as an outside hitter. Needless to say, I was good, having never played before, I thoroughly enjoyed playing and I could spike the ball as if I had played for years. The head coach of the entire camp worked with me one on one for the majority of the seven days, I was honored, because come to find out, he was one of the best coaches in southwestern Virginia. He invested his time and energy into ensuring that volleyball never left me. And from that moment on, I knew, it’s in my blood.

After this camp in sixth grade I dabbled in the sport, for I was into cheerleading and planned to cheer through college. Football, cheerleading, and volleyball are played at the same time of year, so I had to choose, and I picked cheerleading. I had cheered since I could remember and was very competitive with it; therefore it seemed like the easier route to take. But after about seventh grade, I lost the spark that caused me to love cheerleading, I just didn’t enjoy it like I used to. So I turned to volleyball. It was a long and enduring process, as I had to attend multiple training sessions to hone in on the specific skills that I already possessed which would help me in volleyball. These included; speed, agility, vertical leap, arm and core strength, and above all quick decision making skills. Of course these skills could be improved, but at the time they were just testing me to see what I could handle. Apparently I did pretty well because in the next training session I attended, they placed me as a middle hitter, which is known as the hardest position in volleyball to play. The middle has to be able to jump and hit, block a ball coming at an extremely fast speed and velocity towards your face, pass, set, and have the quickest spike approach of anyone on the entire team. Then out of nowhere I moved. Not to another house in the area, flat out three states away kind of move. We went from Virginia to Georgia over the summer before my eighth grade year.

This move was a little traumatic, for I had become confidant in who I was becoming and had a great friend group, then relocation changed all of that. I was stuck in another state with only my passion to play volleyball still the same. So the first thing I did after we moved in was to start looking for somewhere to play volleyball. Fortunately volleyball is huge in Georgia, especially Atlanta, so it was easy to find somewhere to play. I signed up for a camp that was all summer long and involved scrimmaging some of the other eighth graders in the area. We practiced with our assigned team and started playing matches, the day before our first match I became sick. Really sick, my tonsils became swollen to the point of impaired breathing. I went to the doctor and they tested me for strep, and it came back negative. My lymph nodes were so swollen that they decided to test me for mono. Unfortunately it was positive, and my spleen was swollen, which meant that I could not play volleyball. I could not play until a year later, and by that time we had, by some miracle moved back to Roanoke, into the same house and everything! But it was my freshman year, everything had changed, the volleyball players had improved, the friend groups had changed and I was once again alone with only my passion to play volleyball. With the exception of my best friend Stephanie, I had no idea what to do about high school, much less volleyball! When I moved back the first thing I did was literally jump into Stephanie’s arms and squeezed the living day-lights out of her. As my best friend, of course Stephanie played volleyball too; she loved it as much as I did.

But Stephanie was a baton twirler, and that was during volleyball season, so she never played in middle school. She wanted to try out for feature twirler as a freshman, and I wanted to try out for JV volleyball as a freshman. So I was going to have to go into try outs alone, having not seen any of the girls play since 7^th grade, I was beyond worried. What if I was awful since I hadn’t played in so long? What if they were amazing? Needless to say, it was awful; I threw up in the first hour of tryouts and almost passed out during a passing drill. The other players were older and amazing at their positions, and I was terrible. I prayed that by some miracle that I would make it through the two days of tryouts, and by some even greater miracle to make the team. At the end of tryouts, for day two, we scrimmaged while one by one, the girls were pulled to the side and told if they made it or not. Everyone who made it stayed and everyone who didn’t left immediately, finally it was my turn. I walked into the coaches’ office, closed the door and sat down in a chair across from the varsity coach. She looked at me and I already knew what she was going to say. I didn’t make it. After all that I had been through, it wasn’t enough, all of the compliments and encouragement was all lies; I obviously wasn’t anywhere close to where I needed to be talent wise.

I thought it was over, I gave up mentally. I didn’t play volleyball for two weeks and I was watching “Facing the Giants” when I heard the line, “I want God to bless this team so much people will talk about what He did. But it means we have got to give Him our best in every area. And if we win, we praise Him. And if we lose, we praise Him. Either way we honor Him with our actions and our attitudes. So I'm asking' you... What are you living for? I resolve to give God everything I've got, and then I'll leave the results up to Him.” I was moved, it made me realize that no matter how I felt, how was this going to reflect on all of the younger kids who want to try out next year, what about my siblings and my parents, what about the coach? Could I prove the coach wrong, prove that I should have made JV and that I was worth the effort? Well, that became my mission, which is why I play volleyball. If someone asked me today, why do you play volleyball and what drives you?  I would answer; I didn’t make the JV volleyball team and I want to prove the JV coach wrong, in every way possible, not to make her feel bad, but to show that I was worth every second of her time that she gave me, I was good enough, she just didn’t see it. Now I play on a travel volleyball team called NRV 16 Rox. And I have grown so much as a person and I have learned more than I ever imagined. Going into next school season I want to try out for Varsity and JV, hopefully I will make varsity, but you never know.

All in all, if you have a passion for something, don’t ignore it, you need to embrace it and show everyone that you are a great player and that you should never be overlooked just because you are not as experienced as the other competitors.  I have learned through my experiences, and now I know that when you fall, you come back swinging. Show everyone that you are a force to be reckoned with and don’t back down no matter what.