Volleyball Idiot | Fr 2/24

I woke up only to see the meeting I woke up for was cancelled. I tried to sleep for a bit, and then I was skipped over for stand-up. I didn't do any work until the meeting with Sam, which was a lecture like with Trevor. We talked about solid principles, which was weird to repeat but I guess I should keep looking into it. After that meeting I chilled and napped more, eventually woke up to log out at 5, and got ready to eat and leave around 6.

I was very rushed at dinner, but packed my food to leave on time. The traffic wasn't great, but my music pumped me up well. Speaking of which, when I was down sad yesterday I realized how much music, like jokes, helps me to cope. I got to the SWAC in time to referee, but Chloe had me upref without a whistle or certification at first only for Joe to show up as we were going to start.

With that pressure gone, reffing the first game wasn't bad and we went into our first game right after. Our sub didn't come yet, but we were chatty and I think we played alright for the first set (17-25 I think). By the start of the second though, our substitute came and we did pretty well. I gave up some service aces and was eventually asked to pull out of serve receive, but otherwise I think I had pretty good defense standing in good spots and not dropping the ball when it came to me. The team talked a lot, we took our first set, and we even chatted in between games to get to know each other.

Around then I looked for friends but couldn't find anyone but Sara who had early games. She came over and we watched advanced play, namely Andrew, along with Anthony. It was nice getting to chat about the game, how DIVA isn't the best place to learn even if it is competitive, and I ended up getting invited to play on Sundays with DJ at Anthony's recommendation. I heard of the group (the Sunday service) from Von, but didn't know anything else. It seems like the focus on fundamentals early in is good, but later opinions about the open gym from Sara and Andrew seem just okay.

Eventually I played again, and the team seemed to be in a good mood, but we had a harder match-up. I was happy with my defense in position 5, so it didn't hurt to lose. Afterwards we continued to watch and had good talk about how to start reading players and their tendencies. Anthony and Sara also recommended watching higher level, but not excessively so, games to pick up on tactics.

Eventually they wanted to hit around so we went to an empty court and they brought friends over. We hit a bit at first and switched to 4's and 5's as more people came, which was a lot of fun. I didn't realize how much I wanted to be on the court until I heard that they wanted to play. We messed around until the SWAC closed at midnight, but decided to grab food together. There we talked about how terrible inflation and prices are, rec centers that run games during the week, and tried to set up another drill day.

I'm also going to try to play games with Sara tomorrow, and I guess I'll try out the Sunday service too see if it's worth it over drill days.