I get a call the other day asking if I would play volleyball. I couldn’t turn that down, so I said I was in. 10 minutes later I get a call back, “I wrote your information down as the coach, thanks”. So I guess I’m coaching a volleyball team. That’s a new one to me. My sister has been a head HS volleyball coach the last few years, so she loved hearing that. Since I got a head start coaching, I’ve been giving her advice on how to handle parents and have fun with coaching, and now she finally got her chance to give me some advice. I guess i could say that it’s now the 5th sport I’ve coached, 6th if you consider slowpitch softball different from baseball.
The first game was a fun experience. Nobody knew the rules and we didn’t really warm up, but we were all eager to play. We didn’t do too bad, the first game was about 15-25, second was 17-25, and the 3rd was quite worse, something like 7-25. We had a good time though and there were a few good plays. The surprise appearence by Leslie, was definatly a help. She’s the one that should be coaching. The rest of our team consisted of Ashley (didn’t not play, because she’s too cool), Berto, Dot, Michelle, Mark & Sara helped us out, then Amy & I.
Our next game we knew we had 6 showing up, so it worked out perfect that nobody had to sub, only bad thing is that I was the only guy playing. Which wasn’t all that bad. We got a slow start getting used to the new player (just kidding Lisa), and lost the first game about 10-25. I say probably because nobody ever knows what the score is. I’m not sure if it has to do with the beer, nobody knowing how to keep rally scoring, or nobody cares, but each game is kind of an estimate. The second game was much better. We started to pull things together and had a pretty good lead like 23-18, then gave up enough points that it was tied. We were able to get the serve back and kept serving for game point, then they’d get it right back and need 2 points. So we had the advantage, but couldn’t close the game. I was actually nervous, I haven’t felt that feeling for a long time. I guess i’m not as confident in my volleyball abilities as slow pitch softball. We ended up losing the game about 31-29. I know it was 2 points and I know it was higher than 25. We again played a 3rd game for fun, which I believe would’ve been around 40-12. We just kept playing, it was good practice. There were a couple highlights on the night. One of which happened when a guy on their team decided to spike the ball pretty hard on one of our players. It wasn’t a huge deal, but he hit it pretty hard. I don’t complain about this kind of stuff, because I dont’ want to get into the bickering about carries & lifts, or how many guys hit the ball, or other stuff like that. There aren’t any officials, so if we start complaining, they are going to have plenty to complain back about. Not to mention that my fiance went under the net and took out an ankle earlier in the game. So I calmed down our team and said not to worry about it. Then maybe 2 serves later, I get a perfect set and hit it about as hard as I could right at the guy. I picked him out and aimed it at him. I wasn’t trying to hit him, just have some fun. The ball landed at his feet and you could see he was a little surprised. Both teams had fun with it, his team was saying “payback’s a bitch isn’t it”. Needless to say, he didn’t spike any more. We had some really good team work during the second & third games. We were doing the whole bump, set, spike thing, it looked good. Once we play together a couple more times and get our rotation figured out, we’ll be pretty tough decent ok.
Sounds like we are going to have a couple new faces next game, I’m looking forward to it. A little more testosterone, never hurts. 🙂 Tuesday’s @ 7:30 @ Digz, see ya there.
