Rekindling The Flame With An Old Love

I've been struggling the last few days to figure out what to write about. My life is pretty good these days and I've often found that when that is the case I feel less creative. It makes one understand why artists can often be the angsty type. I'm not complaining though. I'm happy to be relatively content.

You may not know that I have an on again off again love affair, that started my freshman year of high school. In fact when it started I was like 5'7" and weighed 93 lbs. Now I'm 6'3" and weigh 110 lbs.* So I've come along way. I am of course speaking of my love affair with volleyball.

Before I started ninth grade I thought I would wrestle in high school. I went to one meeting and the coach did not say a single thing that made it sound fun. I think the straw that broke the camel's back was him saying "You will get some sort of fungus, you'll lose twenty pounds, and you have to give up your summers." All of this sounded terrible to me and my days as a supplexing, shooting, pinning, son of a gun were over before they started. My best friend JJ played volleyball. That was pretty much all it took. I was a volleyball player (or my facsimile of a volleyball player).

Karch Kiraly. The greatest American volleyball player in history.

I played four years in high school the last two on varsity. We did not win a lot of games but we had a ton of fun. We had nicknames (some of my Whittier friends still call me Champ), choreographed routines when we got a big block or hit, and jokes that live on to this day. Yes, I am talking about you Phil. And at the end of my career I had exactly 0 league championships, 0 all league honors, and a 3-13 senior season. Not exactly hall of fame credentials but I did have love for a great game, and some very fun, and interesting teammates, and even my picture in the local newspaper. Sadly this was previous to the dyas of digital cameras and my parents never thought to take pictures of me playing. I have a few but not many.

In college JJ, and I reunited with some of his friends to form the Red Dragons, we actually won the intramural championship. I'm still not really sure how but we did. I guess that was the apex of my career. No volleyball is not the toughest sport in the world, but I will tell you this, those of you who have never played, it's a lot harder than it looks to play the right way.

I still love to play. I played for one of our ward teams, and once again I recruited JJ to play. I was a bit rusty and not very even keeled when it came to patience with my teammates but I loved being back on the court. A few times last summer we played beach volleyball, it was a great excuse to take my shirt off.

Last night my friend Patricia stopped by. She asked if I wanted to play volleyball. After about four seconds of contemplation, I got up from the porch, changed my clothes and was ready to play. I got on the court, I felt slow, rusty, and had no sense of timing. I couldn't hit (which is not a surprise because I never could) sucked at passing, and even the thing I do best, block was lame at best. I thought to myself, What had happened to this once proud athlete? But after a few games I blocked a little, had better placement with my hits, and we won a few games. I walked out of the gym and thought about how much I love volleyball. I am intrigued to see if I can get my top flight form back with some consistent play. Perhaps there is some advanced genius in my volleyball play.

Whatever the case may be,volleyball has been very very good to me.


*I actually weigh a bit more