Club Volleyball

Some information on the Club Volleyball team is that you must be an enrolled student-athlete at the University of Kentucky. Each of their teams have up to 15 people depending on how many positions and lineups that they have for the team. There are two teams, and both teams go to every tournament. There are tryouts for this sport, held in the fall and sometimes, depending on who all returns from the fall semester that they may have tryouts again in the spring. They have at least four tournaments per semester, some of which are as far as Clemson University or as close as Indiana University or Ohio State University. All tournaments are held on the weekends, but usually don’t take up the entire weekend.

I started playing a sport, actually sports, when I was four years old. It is just something that I grew up with. I feel like every child is just tossed into a sport or multiple sports until they find out which one they like the most or which sport they are the best at playing. The reason why I start off my paper explaining my thought on childhood sports is because its something that really interests me, seeing how I started playing tennis and never stopped, its been 13 years now. It really makes me interested in seeing how long other people have been playing a sport or if people have ever played one before. Coming to college I decided against trying out for the team because of the lack of time I would have to dedicate to the team, I came to an out of state college because I wanted the “college experience.” After telling my family my decision they kept saying why don’t you at least do the club team because it’s not as serious as the varsity team, but still is a good way to continue your tennis career. I really did think about it, but for me I wanted to focus mainly on my classes along with my sorority that I joined.

    Since women’s tennis is in the fall, I decided to go with the other sport that I played, volleyball. I have a friend who is actually on the club volleyball team here at UK. She absolutely loves it and tells me nothing but good things and it made me want to go to a practice and see what exactly its like when they are at practice. I got the chance to see how intense the program is, so I can get a feeling for what the differences are between the different levels of competitiveness. I think that physical activity is something that is really important and I am not one to talk about being an active person these days in college, but when I was home, I was always doing some type of activity. I look at these club teams as a fun way to get to know more people and make friends, while getting exercise and being apart of a team. I personally would rather be on a team with other people and be doing physical activity that I actually like, compared to going to the Johnson Center and working out.

            There are many things that go into a team, some of which are; people, coaches, practices, time, and effort. The club volleyball team practices every Tuesday and Thursday from 7:30-10 at night on north campus at the Alumni Gym. They also have tournaments on the weekends, traveling to different states and different colleges. It’s a good way to meet people from all over and make new friends traveling to tournaments. The team will stay at a hotel and all room together, which is such a good way to bond and really get to know each other. This is something I really miss because it brings back memories of my high school experiences. My junior year, we went to state finals in Columbus, Ohio and stayed at the hotel right by The Easton Mall and it was one of the best times ever. We just goofed around, hung out together, shopped, ate, and got ready to go play the next day.

      

      After being at a practice I noticed that all of the players got along so well, Occasionally, there are problems when it comes to sports teams because someone is always better then you, or you feel like no one is as good as you. Watching the team practice and seeing how well they interacted with each other made me think differently about how a team really can work. I know because of how many teams that I have been on in my life that it isn’t always that way. Many times people have conflicts because they always want to be better than the other person, when really, if you worked together to be better as a whole, then the team would do better. As the cliché goes, there is no “I” in team. 

            Doing this analysis really made me think about club teams in a very positive way. It makes me think that maybe next year I will change my mind and decide to continue my tennis career. These girls really showed me that being a part of a team is always a great feeling. It’s something that I really do miss about high school and pretty much my entire life actually, thinking about a time that I wasn’t playing a sport or on a team is really hard to do. There is a quote that I found after really thinking more about starting up playing tennis again. “Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back... play for her (Mia Hamm).” This really described how I felt after talking to the volleyball girls, I really got the feeling that they are doing this because they have always loved the sport and it made me realize that I need to do what I have always been good at, play tennis.