Volleyball Coaching Life-The First Day

In the locker room…

There are shrieks of greeting the familiar

There are the silences of greeting the unfamiliar

Music leak from earpods, in sych with the players heartbeats and feeding the butterflies in their stomachs.

Brand new kneepads liberated from the wrappings, knowing that smell will never come back after the first practice.

Socks are put on with care with the memories of long ago blisters.

Hair is tied back into a tight and practical ponytail.

Arm sleeves and wrist bands are placed just so.

Fingers are taped for maximum karma.

Shoes are tied and retied, never reaching the sweet spot between too tight and not tight enough.

Newbies have eyes like saucers, absorbing the new. Fearing the worst, hoping for the best.

Veterans watching the newbies, reading them.

Observing the strength, looking for cracks and the light that inevitably shines through them.

The freshmen taking deep breaths.

The seniors also taking deep breaths.

Both are embarking on a new path.

One anticipating and dreading the first.

One anticipating and dreading the last.

In the gym…

Coaches huddle and debate.

Reviewing the practice plans that have been bled, sweated, and cried over. Its content sear indelibly in their minds.

Plans that started as a thought on a coffee shop napkin and evolved into something with a logic and chronology all its own.

Plans that had extracted a pound of flesh from each coach.

Managers are sweeping the floor for the hundredth time because the previous 99 times were just not good enough.

Nets are tightened to the point of breaking.

Air compressors are whining their distinctive tone, filling each volleyball to a rock-hard consistency.

Pressures are checked and rechecked.

Water stations are filled, complete, and ready.

Silent sentinels for what is to come. Good and bad.

It is the start of the Fall volleyball season, for the tiniest tots to the most seasoned and grizzled collegians, and everyone in between.

No skeptics or cynics are allowed in the gym.

Everyone is 0-0.

Everyone has the chance to go undefeated.

Everyone has the chance to go winless.

And everything in between.

Everyone believes.

Coaches hope for progress and revelation.

Player hope for progress and revelation.

Never mind the drama, the challenges, the practices, the matches, the conflicts.

Always believing in becoming and being the best.

As the players enter the gym…

Some charge in excitedly.

Some saunter in nonchalantly.

Some creep in hesitantly.

Some enter while taking such deep breath that they might pass out.

The sound of chatter is loud, energetic, fearful, hopeful, equanimous, and everything else.

Coaches watch their teams…

They feel their own butterflies grow into Mothra.

“This is it,” they think.

This is us, from now until the end of the season.

We will learn together.

We will suffer together.

We will exult together.

We will love together.

We will bicker together.

We will live and die together.

Coaches watching each other.

Players watching the coaches.

Coaches and players bound together in anticipating and dreading of the unknown.

Then it is time. One coach breaks out of their trance.

The whistle blows…