Through the eyes of a senior: Pregame

This is continued from Part I.

As we walk into the gym, it’s quiet, but I see that we are the last to arrive to the party. The Walled Lake Central team has already come in, set up the net, and finished their practice, since they play on Thursday. Walled Lake Northern, who we’re playing has already started to warm up. It was terrifying to walk into that situation. I’ve never been more nervous before a volleyball game than before this one.

I walk over to the bleachers pull out my earbuds blaring OH WONDER. I sit down next to my bag and just take a moment…a moment to take a much needed breath and a moment to look around and just take it all in.

As I sit there putting on my shoes so much goes through my head. I think about what’s going to happen tonight. I know what I need to do; I know my part on this team. All I hope right now is that I fulfill that part and so it well.  

I get my shoes on and take a deep breath as I stand up. I try to calm my nerves by grabbing a drink of water. Then I start warming up. As usual, I warm up with my softball girls Allison Smith and Lauren Carinato. It all goes as usual, but Walled Lake Northern is being unusually rowdy. They get loud and we try to get louder it was a weird atmosphere that I’ve never been in before. No one but Northern and us were in the gym, but it was louder than the actual game ever was.    

Another senior Sydney Phipps talks about what was going through her head. “I was excited and a lil bit nervous. I thought we were gonna have it in the bag.”  

There are no words to describe our feelings.  We know what we need to do and have it all laid out. We get into our court time where we have all the court for four minutes. We looked good. I thought we were banging balls in and I actually didn’t do that bad at hitting warm-ups and that usually meant I was going to do well.

The game begins and we go up by three right away, but our initial surge was stopped. We fell the first game, but we then thought, “it’s ok. This match is now going to four and we’re winning the next three games. We dropped the second game, at that time we we’re determined that we were taking this to five games. The doubt that we we’re going to pull this out doubt started to creep into my mind.

By the time the third game was halfway over, I knew we probably weren’t going to pull this out. When I came off the floor during the game, I had to choke back tears. It all just hit me at once. Throughout the season the team and I have ran just around 90 sprints and 11 basketball suicides (yes, we counted) and the fact that all those now have gone to waste hurt us badly. 

The worst feeling was when that last ball hit the floor though. I saw it hit and exhaled a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

I was the first one though the hand clap line. I didn’t look at anyone. I walked quickly through the line and immediately went to my bag sat down and just put my head in my hands.

We had lost. There was no more volleyball for me. No practice tomorrow or the day after that. No summer workouts, and it still feels weird.