Why I Coach-The BFFs
More remembrances of lessons I learned from the people that I had the pleasure of coaching.
People have always asked me why? Why do I put myself out there as a coach for junior volleyball when I don’t have children of my own? Why would I sacrifice my precious down time to do something that could be so frustrating and aggravating?
It is difficult to explain and justify to someone who has not been bitten by the coaching bug. Rather than explaining, I will try to demonstrate through some vignettes of those things that made me addicted to coaching. In many ways it is closely related to my love of teaching, but even though coaching and teaching both involve getting people to learn — hopefully showing them how to better learn on their own — the two milieus are unique in their own ways. This is about my experiences as a youth coach, and the rewards that I get in return for my efforts. Believe me when I say that I get more out of coaching than the players get out of me. The vast majority of the reward is intrinsic, which may explain the incredulity of the outsiders looking in.
A caveat: these stories are all from my own memories, so I can only vouch for what I remember, as filtered through my own rose-tinted lenses.
One of many rewards when it comes to coaching is that one meets the acquaintance of stellar human beings, except that you meet them as they are breaking through the protective cocoon of childhood while maturing into their adult selves after having their characters shaped and formed by their parents, families, society, and the environment around them. Seeing their budding persona is akin to looking deep into the crystal ball for clues to the kind of adult that they have the potential of becoming. This is the story of a 17’s team but especially Colleen and Emily and their bond.
Colleen and Emily were BFFs before they came to play on our 17’s team, indeed, they have known each other since they were knee high to a grasshopper. They learned to play volleyball while playing in their parochial leagues together. They also attended the same Catholic high school, and of course they were volleyball teammates in high school. These two, along with a third member of the triumvirate, Kim, who is a year older, had an ongoing game of never-ending three-person pepper game since they were just beginning to learn how to play volleyball. This was a sign of how dedicated and passionate they were about the sport of volleyball. This never-ending pepper game obviously impressed all the coaches in our club, even though we made light of their obsession with the simple pepper game; the truth was that we were just as passionate and single-minded about volleyball as they were, it made them one of us, be it good or bad.
Colleen was a ball-control left side, not physically dominant but had a great swing and volleyball IQ. She played all her club career with one of the oldest and most established clubs in town. I think I may have coached against her team, although I don’t remember. Ball-control was the basis of her game, throw any kind of serve at her or put any kind of hitter against her and she will handle it coolly and calmly. The passes and digs came up so softly and accurately that they made her coaches cry tears of joy. On top of all that she always said hello, was always polite, she always makes eye contact when speaking to you, was always respectful even during the heat of battle. The only exception to her politeness was when she was dismantling an opponent.
One of the stories about Colleen and her proclivity for being eager to please is that my friend Santiago, who coached the 17’s team, made his players do a barrel roll during practices if they missed a dig. So, when Colleen missed a dig because she was out of her defensive position during a tense match in a qualifier, Santiago stood on the sideline and pointed to the correct position that Colleen was supposed to be defending. Mistaking Santiago’s intent, Colleen did a roll on the court. Well, Santiago busted out laughing, the entire team were laughing so hard they couldn’t catch their breath, the opposing team thought that the team was off their rockers. Colleen was oblivious to the humor of the situation, but then again that’s Colleen.
Emily played for me on the last team I coached for my old club before I started this club. She was one of two setters for that team; I ran a 6-2 offense because both setters were both height-challenged, I substituted taller players when the setting position rotated to the front row. We were successful, the right-side blockers protected our backrow defenders, and both setters ran the offense for us. As with all things, people couldn’t leave well enough alone, the other setter and her parents made a public scene in the downtime during one of the tournaments and complained loudly and bitterly about her role as a 6-2 setter, which they assert was keeping her from getting more playing time, claiming that was going to affect her role on the high school team; even though this was true for both setters. Emily came to me in her quiet way after the drama was over and offered to sit more so that the other setter had a chance to play some 5-1. This was the kind of kid Emily was. Her offer surprised me and she impressed me with her kindness and team-first attitude.
Even though Emily was incredibly quiet, she didn’t have to raise her voice to communicate; because she had the respect of everyone on every team she played on. She worked harder than anyone else because she knew that her lack of height in a tall person’s game was a challenge than she needed to overcome, and the best way was to do so was to outwork everyone. She worked even harder when she joined our 17’s team because that team was loaded with physical players —most of the players ended up playing college ball at some levels — so Emily accepted her role while keeping her mouth shut and outworked everyone. The other players on that team knew it and respected her integrity and work ethic. This tacit acknowledgement of her silent leadership became a self-regulating mechanism, the team knew what they needed to do to help her play her role without her pointing out the obvious, and they did it without fail.
It is one thing to be BFFs on a surface social level, but it is quite another to be committed to a friend when the chips are down. This memory flooded into my mind when I started to focus my effort to remember and document all the events involving those players that I have had the good fortune to interact with, those players who had impacted me with their actions.
As a part of our club practice, club-wide conditioning practices were mandatory every week. The emphasis was on volleyball game movements to improve agility, endurance, and flexibility. We didn’t have access to a weight room nor to cardio equipment, so the workouts were limited. During the warmups of one of the conditioning practices, I heard a blood curdling scream. Emily had hurt her knee, the distraught look on her face told the whole story and it gutted me, all the coaches knew instinctively that this was a severe injury, we all had the sinking feeling in the pit of our stomachs.
Upon her return to practice the next week, we found out that we had lost Emily for the rest of the season, but true to form she was working to rehab her knee to return to play at Junior Nationals, but it seemed like a bridge too far. Forever a true team player, Emily still came to every practice and tournament to be there for her teammates. By the time nationals came, she was well enough to practice serving, so Santiago produced a scheme where we can get Emily to serve at nationals, but she was not well enough to play defense as she is wont to do. The team practiced what each player’s role was when Emily served and stepped in for her so that she can stay in her out of the way corner of the court, they practiced situational options: where the blockers needed to be, which defender had to cover more court, who had to cover the widened seams between players, what happens if there is a gap in the block while there was more court to cover, and what happens if the ball ends up heading towards the corner where Emily was hiding. Of course, Colleen was a key part of what made this scheme work; she stepped up to take charge of leading the team defense as well as yelling at Emily so that she is not tempted to go and play a ball and risk further hurting herself. I do remember that they managed to pull it off, I don’t remember how many times Santiago called for the serving sub. All I know is that I saw them practice and I saw them execute it at least once. I was proud of these kids pulling it all together for their teammates, I was proud of Colleen having the sense of urgency and stepping up to take charge, I was proud of Emily for getting herself back in shape to at least perform this small role, I was proud of my friend Santiago for thinking up this solution.
Playing at nationals is the culmination of many hours of practice, it takes many moving parts to be coordinated and coming together serendipitously, it takes a group of individuals to sacrifice their own selfish interests in deference to the collective best. This group pulled together as teammates to execute together as a team; but most importantly, at least to me, they stepped up to overcome a challenge for their friend and teammate. They were more than teammates, they met the most stringent challenge of all, they showed that they were on their way to becoming the best of humans.
Here we are, almost thirty years later and I still remember, however fuzzy that memory is, that moment. Everyone on that team has moved on beyond the college game, some having played at very high levels college volleyball, while others played at levels that they wanted to play at. They have all graduated from college, many have married and started families, and many have kids that are now playing club sports, that thought always sends shots of shivers up my spine.
Colleen went on to matriculate at Washington University in St. Louis and is a PT. She has a family herself, four kids at last count. She also ended up collecting a Division III national championship ring at WashU.
Emily went on to matriculate at Notre Dame, joining her triples pepper partner Kim, but she focused on her studies there and did not play volleyball. She received her medical degree after graduating from Dartmouth medical school. Santiago and I met up with her in Seattle a few years ago when we were in town for the Women’s Division I National Championship and she was there doing her medical residency. She is now back home working as an internist and teaches medicine as a professor of medicine.
The thing that stood out with this story for me is that the topic of conversation does not just surround the game of volleyball — even though volleyball is what drew us all together — it is what the game of volleyball reveals about the person that is there all along and the role that the game of volleyball nurtures that potentially good human into a spectacular human.