Goal: Building from my season last year, I hope to achieve a higher level of volleyball while working and growing with my teammates. Since this is my last year before hopefully playing in college, it is important that I give my 100% to my team and be sure to leave my mark on the court. I also hope that as I improve my personal skills, I can help teach my younger teammates tips and tricks in the wonderful game of volleyball. I specifically would like to improve my jump setting more and work on reading the other side before I set.
The Last Season:
During preseason workouts in the summer, it had not hit me that I was going to be one of the oldest players on the team, meaning everyone was going to look up to all the seniors on the team. As the season started, something that I constantly had to be aware of was my actions on and off the court. I remember when I was not a senior, I always looked up to the seniors on my team and wanted to do act the way they did. Luckily, I had great seniors every year who were amazing role models and
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| Senior Picture |
taught me how to carry myself-I hope that I could do the same for the younger girls on my team. Always being open and encouraging is a feature that I find very important, so I made sure that my team knew that they could always count on me for anything they needed. I kept extra knee pads, socks, hairbands, and spandex in my bag in case somebody forgot theirs at home. They came in handy many times as my teammates accidentally forgot their gear at home several times throughout the season. I also made sure that I was always early for practices and games to help set up the court as fast as possible. This proved very important because the faster the nets were set up, the more time we could practice. As I practiced my jump setting more and more, I found that I began to feel comfortable enough to start doing it in games. The first time I did it without thinking about it, then once I realized that I had just jump-set, I wanted to do it more. Jump setting is advantageous because it makes it harder for the blocker on the other side to guess where I am going to set the ball, thus giving me a better chance to set up my hitters with one block to hit against instead of two. We also started running different plays with the hitters to fake out the blockers on the other side which was very fun because I had to examine our opponents defense and blockers and decide which play to run based on who was on the court on my side and the opponent's side. This decision making process was very fun to learn and apply as I could feel myself and the team improve. The highlight of my last season was when we put on our annual breast cancer fundraiser, but this year there was a twist. Instead of playing another high school like we normally did, we challenge the football team to a game of volleyball. The planning and execution was awesome and it was really fun playing them for a great cause. We ended up raising more than $2,000 from the fundraiser which was all donated to breast cancer research. However, the most memorable part of the season was probably the worst part of it. Our high school's biggest rival is Page High School and we play them in volleyball every year and for the past 7 years, the Grimsley Varsity team has beaten them. Unfortunately this year, the outcome was not what we had hoped for. We lost to Page and everyone felt so upset. The main point of any failure story is to learn and improve from the failure. Although we lost to our rivals, we turned around and beat the three time defending conference champion, Southern Alamance, which helped our spirits rise to finish off the season making it to the first round of State Playoffs. No matter what happened, I am extremely grateful to have been a part of the Grimsley Volleyball Program for the past four years and know that no matter where I go, I will always have a Grimsley family to turn to whenever I need support.
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| Dig Pink Fundraiser- football team vs. volleyball team |
Learning Outcome: Worked Collaboratively With Others: As mentioned in the previous Grimsley Volleyball blog post, volleyball requires the effort of each player on the court. Without 100% effort, there is no way a team can win. I found that this year specifically, our loss to Page caused us to come closer together and learn to rely on each other when we fall. After being knocked down, the only thing we could do is help each other get back up; everyone worked on their individual skills that they needed to improve. After focusing on technique, we had to learn how to use these new skills to benefit and work with everyone else's skills on the team.
Learning Outcome: Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities: Senior year means lots of fun activities and places to go to enjoy the last year of high school. Many times, my fellow seniors and I had to sacrifice these one-time events to come to practice. Although it was hard seeing our friends have a good time at football games or bonfires, working hard in the gym was worth all the missed events for me. Volleyball is such a technique-based sport that it requires constant practice to gain the proper muscle memory, and I understood this when I committed to playing the sport.
Learning Outcome: Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth: For me, jump setting this year was my biggest improvement because I was able to be so confident in them that I started doing it in games. I am normally a very safe player, so seeing myself step out of my comfort zone to try jump setting originally brought me to a new level of confidence in myself that I did not have before. I also know that there are things that I still need to work on. I really want to focus on my agility and leg strength so that I can get to the ball fast which will improve my jump setting.
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