A friend of mine the other day said that he did not like golf because of the lack of achievement one gets with it. You can master a video game, but with golf some new problem is always developing. After practicing and playing volleyball yesterday, I realized that this is true of all sports that I have played and it is just a fact of life.
True, I have seen people who have natural ability for sports, but even though they may be a notch above, they still have their problems.
So, I had my friends work on hitting the volleyball being given good, consistent sets. I was trying to help them work on technique.
When I first learned to play volleyball, I learned the basics from my uncle, who had me play pepper with him at the beach. We used to play 2 on 2 and that was about it. Then, I played church ball and we were good. We had a basic system, but we still had not really developed any technique. That came later. My Senior year in high school I finally got to play. I had wanted to play every year before that, but the club team was kind of secretive.
So, my first try-out practice came for the high school team and there were a lot of kids out there. I remember not doing anything very spectacular the first day and my Mom giving me a hard time about that. So, the next day, I was intense. And, I remember just doing what it took. I think that was a turning point for me in volleyball. Making that team was huge. Then, I got to learn how to play a 6-2 and how to hit the proper way. I learned where to stand assuming you have a decent block up there.
We had an okay year, with some nice highlights. We had two major tournaments. The first one, we went up from San Diego and played in Pacific Palisades against a bunch of teams in the LA and Orange County areas. We even lost to the JV team. We were so outmatched. But then, something amazing happened. We had another tournament a couple weeks later in San Diego and we took it. We beat all the teams. We took our experience from up north and used it to win down south. I constantly marvel at that. But then our games throughout the year were not so great. We won a couple, but then lost most of the important ones.
I went to college after that at Long Beach State University, which is of course, one of the best volleyball schools in the nation. The workout routine for the summer to make the team was insane. I think the routine frightened me away before I even looked into it. Once again, the players to compete against were native to that area. If I had stayed at San Diego State, perhaps I could have been more equipped to compete.
Since that time, I have had various volleyball experiences. A group of guys from work would get together on a Saturday at about 7am to play. I played with a couple guys for a three man tournament at King Henry apartments and we took that.
Then, a miracle happened. A guy on my team at work used to play all the time with local guys who are good. We went and played one day and I did terrible. It had been years. Then, we found out there was some guys at work who played an indoor game two times a week, every week. The guy in charge grew up in San Diego and had a passion for technique and playing properly. He talked to some other guys at work who wanted to play, but did not want to play jungle ball.
So, I started going once a week. It was nice to play again. It's always nice to play. The guys in this group are hit and miss. Some are good, some not so good. Some have technique, some have no technique. Some learn from their mistakes. Some never learn. Some play smart. Some play defense. Some play offense. Most have improved.
This game has been going on for about 3 years now. The organizer and I have talked about various aspects of it. His intensity helps me to want to continue to go and play. I enjoy it because it is volleyball, but it is nice to have the competition aspect too. We have talked about the idea of winning versus losing. We have talked about technique. We have talked about keeping it simple for people to keep the interest alive.
These guys have gotten good enough to start learning technique. But, we may never get there. And that has to be okay, because some people always complain about making it too good. Some people like to not be very good. They like to play for exercise sake. They want to keep tempers from flaring, which can be one of my problems. Volleyball is such a team sport. And, getting 12 guys/girls to come out week after week takes a tremendous amount of skill. I could not even get one of my friends to play one game in the heat yesterday. How could I convince 11 others to do it? But this organizer does and hats off to him.
As I was working on hitting technique with my friends yesterday, one of them commented on how the ball will never come in that perfect in a real game. I thought of the days of baseball and going to the batting cages. We go to the batting cages to practice technique, getting our timing down, getting our swing just right, working on those things that we can control. Golf has the driving range. Basketball has the standard in front of our house. Rock climbing has the rock wall.
And, we practice things, not to be perfect, but to maintain. We practice so that we can constantly improve. We practice to perform. We practice to get our bodies in line with the activity. We practice to get technique. And we can learn so much from practice that the activity does not have to be where the mistakes are made.
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