That Didn't Happen

So you may have noticed that I never posted about the results of my last tournament… Yeah, that’s because we didn’t win. Whoops. But there is always next time right? Of course I’m right. Here’s the thing though, we lost to the one person we vowed not to: none other than a former coach, Bob. We hated this coach, and hated losing to him even worse. You see, the reason for such a deeply rooted dislike for this particular coach is, well his nickname among the players was Boner Bob if that helps to make it clear. Now I had played up with his team my first and second years on Elevate, due to that I had actually become comfortable around him as a coach. Mainly because I liked his tactics: first off, you’re here to play, so show up ready for the game. Second, this is a sport not a beauty show, so stop constantly worrying about how you look. And third, if you want a playing spot you have to earn it. However this was before he started coaching my age group as much.

As Bobby became more involved with girls on my team and the B team, the rumors started. Given that I had never experienced him doing this I didn’t believe it, but then there came the tournament when it happened. After that season however, no one had seen or heard from him, until the invites for the new club he was starting. Unfortunately, we lost a couple of players to him, those traitors!

Aaanyway, enough about the creepy coach. This time, we were gonna get GOLD!! 

My team after taking second in the gold bracket

We did get to the gold bracket, we just didn’t win it. We lost to Apex by less than ten points between both of the games in the match. You don’t understand how pissed I was for every point I gave up. I’m really competitive and I had a deeply rooted need to beat this team as a recovery from last time… That didn’t happen. 

But I did walk away with my medal first medal of 2015, and I can’t wait to sontinue my collection on the fourteenth! (I know, it’s Valentine’s Day. I apologize now to my boyfriend, Dillon)

Going Completely Insane

So I’ve been giving it my all this week to go the extra mile to practice, which is rather difficult given that we had one organized practice, there is snow and ice everywhere outside my house, I have several finals next week, and my parents aren’t exactly all for the whole play in the house thing. They think I’m gonna break something or whatever. So I’ve taken to watching all of the training videos on the club website and getting some one-arm touches while sitting on the floor in my room. Not really the greatest conditions but it’s my third year, I know enough to make it work. Now not that I’m complaining, but my mom and brother aren’t going to be around for my first tournament of the season. My mom gets to go to my brothers house in Texas for a little while because she’s going to help look after my fifteen month old niece while his wife is doing a bridal shoot (she’s a photographer). As for my brother, Wes, he’s going on a road trip with his friends.

Normally this would be totally fine, my dad and I will just spend the time watching 1,000 Ways To Die, horror and action movies and eating. No biggie, we’ve done it before. Here’s the thing though, my mom let me know she couldn’t come by saying, “Since I’m going to Jake’s next week I won’t be able to make it to your first tournament. I’m sorry, 

I really wish I could go.” At which I smiled and said, “Nah, it’s fine. Isn’t my game this week anyway?” Nope. It’s next week. Gah!

Image courtesy of the Club Elevate site

So not only have I been struggling to find time to study for all my finals and to get some touches in, but now I also have to wait another week! What?! No! I do not remember signing up for that. Next week is going to be a brutal battle to get through. So just in case I come crying and complaining to my blog and poor unfortunate readers, I apologize now. I am truly and deeply, sorry. I’m also totally lying, expect ranting and whining about wanting to play. Starting now, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. There ya go.

The only way that you will be able to escape this outcome is to comment and refer shows, movies, and YouTube videos. Yes, I have an addiction, please don’t judge me, I know people who are worse. So here’s where you must come in my young padawons, direct me toward the the multimedia to distract me for the remainder of the week. Enlighten me! I wish to view the things! All of the things! Send me all the funny, scary, dorky and utterly unnecessary links you can to keep me from going completely insane.

Just Wanted To Play

So today we had our only practice of the week, (yeah, I’m not thrilled about that) and we were working on transitions. Pretty basic stuff if you understand what you’re doing. It’s kind of hard to explain with words and not some type of visual aid, but I’ll give it a try. The position I’ve played the longest is setter, so I’m the one who always (well, mostly, always doesn’t always happen) gets the second touch so that I can set up the shot for my hitters, hence the name setter. Now the particular part of the transitions we were working on is when we are in serve-receive, with a back row setter on the right side, (generally known as rotation one for serve-receive using 6-2). This pretty much means that the other team will be serving at us and I am standing in the back on the right. 

Transitions for 6-2 in serve-receive
Image courtesy of Nitro 12 Regional website

What happens now is that I (S) will push up and hide on my right front hitter (RF), while the left front (LF) will pull back to help pass with the center back (CB) and left back (LB). This prevents most servers from being able to serve at me, which would put the play out of sync and basically increase the chance of us losing the point. So by standing on my hitter I can escape a vast majority of screwy plays. From there everyone can transition into their quick spots easily.

We worked on this for at least twenty minutes just tossing and catching the balls before we actually got to play it out.The only players getting any legitimate play time were those who got the first touches, so they could work on passing it to me. So when our coach finally said, “Okay, this one’s live. Make a play.” there was a sigh of relief across the court. I don’t know if you play volleyball, but I’m sure that it can be translated to all sports that if you’re walking through drills, it SUCKS! Seriously, there is nothing worse because all you want to do is play. It’s like having a scratch that you can’t itch, it’ll drive you insane! I think I speak for my entire team when I say, I just wanted to play!

A Medal To Start

So we’ve started playing in practice now, versus just running and doing drills. Now we have to work on teaching the new girls the rotations, which is much easier said than done. It’s complicated. Very complicated. Not to mention we have one more practice before our first tourney of the season next week. Picture this: we have serve. My true position is back left (known as A for hitting) but after the server has made contact with the ball, I have to haul ass across the court and get ready to cover my blocker if necessary and the run to my place in the front of the court, called my POH (point of hesitation). After setting the ball for one of my primary hitters, either outside (on far left of court), middle, or opposite (behind me on far right) I tradition back into what is known as my quick spot. Then I get ready to pick up tips (soft hits that will fall just behind the blocker) and move up to set again as long as the ball is still live.

Seems pretty complicated huh? That’s just one rotation for one play for one specific player. And it’s counting on everything to be perfect. Yeah, it’s hard. Now add in all the other “perfect” plays and the scrappy ones where every player is doing everything she can just to keep the ball alive. Plus reaction to the other team, the never-ending roar from other courts in the gym, and yelling from your coach. Now let me remind you, that’s a practice. During a game everything will be multiplied with the additions of relentlessly screaming parents, tension between teammates, and having to push yourself to the breaking point for the sake of the game.

This is our idea of a good time. Physical and mental torture all for the chance at winning enough games to move on to the next stage in a strong place (really convincing some of you to play I bet, haha). But the feeling at the end of a tournament day when your team has really come together, and hung in enough to get where you wanted to be is indescribable. When the ref from your last game of the day calls your number to step up and place a medal around your neck, a sigh of relief will leave your lips. the moment you’ve worked at all day, sometimes all weekend, is finally here. Another to add to the collection, and for the newbies, a medal to start.

My medals in order of when I received them (left to right)

It Will Be Hell

Y’all have heard of that thing recovering addicts get called withdrawals right? So it turns out that if an athlete gets used to a certain routine, you can get a similar outcome. Okay, maybe not everyone has this but I definitely do, and it sucks! Now this wouldn’t be a problem if my club owned it’s own gym. But we don’t. So since we have to deal with the parent teacher conferences at the school we normally use for practice is in use… Which means we don’t have half of our practices this week! I mean what is that?!

That’s bullshit, that’s what that is! (Pardon my French, but I’m sure you can understand my frustration here.)

Elevate logo on the back of one of my jackets

Back to my point, withdrawals from lack of exercise. You might have absolutely no idea what I mean, I’m talking about: cramps in muscles that are expecting a workout, decreased appetite, and the worst in my opinion, laziness. When there’s not something that you are required to do, you don’t want to do anything at all. In many cases if I don’t go to practice, I will procrastinate on my homework by watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix. I find myself slugging around with the most physical activity being my thumbs either texting or pathetically using the Xbox controller, neither ever requiring more than my wrists to move. As you can probably guess, it’s pretty sad.

To make matters worse, after next week, my club is off for Christmas break. Now most of you don’t know my family, (I hope) but we like to eat. I mean we REALLY like to eat, which is why we work out so much. So that’s how I’ll be spending the break: food, Netflix, food, hopefully play a bit, and more food. NOT a good recipe without a guaranteed practice in case any of you were wondering. My advice? Don’t follow my examples, and if you must… Know when you go back, it will be Hell.

You've Gotta Want It

Okay FINALLY club season has started, because I am dying for game days again. There’s just a couple little problems. For starters, we’re kinda behind the power curve at the moment so we have to work our asses off to catch up; to make that worse, we have a lot of first-years in my age group. Now I’m all in for anyone giving it a shot, but this sport is way harder than it looks and you have to give 100% all the time. You can't slack off and not pay attention until we get to play, conditioning and drills are really important. To quote my coach, Tobin, “We’re never gonna be the biggest in the gym. That’s why we’ve gotta be the best at all the little stuff. Our passing, setting, hitting, serves. We’ve gotta have it all.”

Now everyone who’s played on Elevate for at least a season knows that this is true. Us Vets as we’re sometimes called, do our best to be our best and try to get that mindset into the Rookies as well. However, not all of them will get the message the first time, there will always a few that walk in expecting to be the next USA team without practice. This time though… Yikes.

My coach during the summer season

So some friends and I been with elevate for what will be two or three years now, but none of us have ever seen Tobin blow up this way before. Of course there were a few girls that weren’t paying attention during a drill, it wasn’t hard but some focus was required for it to work, which is the exact opposite of what was happening. A freeball, (easy, underhand tossed) would be tossed at us and all we had to do was pass it, set it and roll shot it (gentle, well received hits) to the other side six times consecutively, then we could start attacking (hard, difficult to return hits). It was a pretty simple drill, or it would be if everyone did their part. 

Unfortunately we never got to the point where we could attack. We did however do six sets of suicides in less than twenty minutes, incorporating: push-ups, crunches, dives (running to a graceful slide as far as you can across the floor). Which would’t be too bad if we were allowed to catch our breath afterward instead of returning to the drill for people to yet again stop paying attention.

As you can guess, we were all getting fed up with this, but none more than my coach. After about three rounds of this he lost it, I’ve never seen him get so mad at players. Understandably though, everyone was suffering because a few people could’t get their act together. Tobin doesn’t have a lot of rules: come ready to play, give it your everything, clean up after yourself, be there for your teammates, and most importantly, don’t waste anybody’s time. You’ve gotta want it.

This Is Halloween

Okay y’all, I realize I’m a bit late on that Halloween blog post thing, but you can bet your sweet ass I’m still going to write one! You see, it’s my FAVORITE holiday season and yes I still consider it a holiday even though I’m fifteen… Don’t judge me. Now I could ramble off to y’all a million reasons why I love this one day so much but I’m sure you’d rather here about the crazy and absolutely hilarious night I had on Friday.

It was a typical white day at our school, I ended with my last class at high school building then walked back to meet up with my friends one more time and catch my bus. After a rather uneventful trip home I decided to scrap the entire costume I had previously chosen and grabbed an old pair of black jeans, my scuffed up combat boots, and a gray t-shirt. I was going off of my friend Mikal’s idea since we sort of did a couples costume for non-couples. I scrambled through all of my Halloween makeup and small props such as teeth until I could finally find the fake blood. I ran outside to jazz up my shirt and arms with battle blood with the fifteen minutes I had left before heading up to Main Street with a few friends. Being that the costume Mikal and I required a special accessory that took a little while to ship, my boyfriend decided not to join us in the Supernatural crossroads demon idea but to go as the human counterpart, a hunter.

The $50 accessory for my costume
If anyone is interested in purchasing these contacts they are from WickedEyez 

I’d say we had a pretty good time roaming around on Main Street, getting overpriced yet amazing pasta and just walking around to pass the time. We spent a few, meaning five, hours doing this until it began to get dark around us. As night feel our small group of Dillon, Mikal, Hunter, Hali and myself made our way towards the bottom of the street. The music got louder and the street had less and less people the further down we got. Once at the bottom we sat on a stone wall across from the restaurant that had the music. We were sitting there no more than ten minutes dancing to the music and playing What Are The Odds (an immature game where guessing the same number often leads to you having to do whatever humiliating task your friends have decided on). Then a tall, probably mid-twenty year old guy in a chicken suit comes stumbling drunk over to us from the bar up the street. Which may have been the reason he thought it would be a good idea to take on the mechanical bull across the street. He struggled to make it over to the bull, then at long last climbed onto it and called to the operator,. He spun four or five times at a low difficulty and then let go and flew to the edge of the area leaving us laughing for a solid five minutes. We were left with some of the best memories from the day and ended the night with the quote from a mutualistic favorite move, “This Is Halloween.”