Inspiration from this Volleyball Season

Inspiration from this Volleyball Season

My dad always says, "Participation and effort can lead you to unbelievable results." I finally realized how true it is from this volleyball season.

Good morning, teacher and fellow students,

The volleyball season started in September, and the players from Grade 8 were split into two teams ---- the blue team and the gold team. The blue team players were mostly new to volleyball and the gold team was for the pros. It was my first year playing volleyball and I was put into the Blue Team.

Honestly, my Blue Team sucked at the beginning. Only a few of us could get serves over the net. Most of us weren’t even able to pass or volley at all.

Even though we were terrible, every one of us participated in morning and after-school practices. We played many schools but haven’t won once. Game after game of losing made us all disappointed and faithless. However, our coach told us we were doing amazing, but my team mates and I still thought we didn’t improve at all.

On the 26^th of October, Collingwood partook in ISA, which is a volleyball tournament for private schools. While we were warming up with Mulgrave, I felt upset. Mulgrave Titans’ strong overhand serves and beautiful high passes reminded me of the game that we lost them badly three weeks ago. I didn’t even want to bother thinking about the result when I knew the winner wouldn’t be us. However, after losing the first set, we were actually cheered up, because there wasn't much difference between the scores of our two schools. The coach encouraged us. “If we have put in a little more effort, we could have won that set.” Hearing that from our coach definitely gave us a lot of confidence and courage. We cheered with our strong Cavaliers’ spirit and were ready to face Mulgrave. While playing the second set, the techniques and strategies we have learned seemed to come back to us. Every time before the Mulgrave Titan stepped behind the service line, tossing the ball, we were already on our toes, ready to make a high pass to the setter. We yelled ‘mine’ as the ball flew hard across the gym and dove for every ball no matter what. As soon as the ball was passed onto the other side of the court, the front role players hopped to the net and were ready to block the ball. I saw that both the players on the court and on the bench put a lot of effort into the game. The players on the court tried their best to get a point as the people on the bench screamed the cheers and encouraged them to do better. A while later, the referee blew the whistle before we realized the game was over. The judges added the total score from each team and our score was higher!

No one seemed to understand or believe the final results. It took about a minute for us to wake up and realize we beat Mulgrave! The gold team started to cheer and the applause from our parents broke out like thunder. Anyhow, it seemed like we were the only group of people on earth at that moment. We shouted in bliss and couldn’t stop hugging or sending compliments to each other. The Mulgrave Titans were looking at us like we’ve gone crazy yet we didn’t care, because we won! Then we learned that our ranking position came from the last to the third last! I felt like I was going to explode because too much good news was attacking me at once. Nevertheless at the same time, it felt like heaven. The glory, the pride, rushed in my veins faster than ever.

That night, after playing the moments of glory over and over again in my head, I realized we won because we participated in practices actively, and at the same time, put effort into the game. All of the players improved throughout the season gradually, so when we put effort into winning, we were able to play well. My speech ends here and I shall leave you with this, as long as you participate actively and do something industriously, you will see the good result.