I've never played a lot of sports.
I mean I like to watch college football and I played soccer for a couple of years and baseball one season in 6th grade but I never went out for the football team or the baseball team in school. Just wasn't my thing. Melinda was even less sporty, way less sporty. Way way less sporty.
You get the idea.
So needless to say I was a little surprised when Beth came home from school one day and said that she wanted to try out for the volleyball team at school. I was even more surprised when she said that tryouts weren't until April or May and it was like February and she started asking me to go out and practice in the street with her. We started practicing at home at least two or three times a week. We practiced serving, hitting balls, returning, etc. I have never seen Beth go after something so intensely. She was so dedicated to learning a game that she had only played for recreation at school. She just inherently knew that if she was going to have a chance of making the team she had to learn the game and get good enough to compete.
I was impressed.
Honestly, I still figured that it was a fad and would pass. I figured that she would either go try out and most likely not make the cut or get bored with it and let it go. There were so many things that were against her. She had never played team sports before, she was going to try out against girls that played on the team last year, and she was very inexperienced. She just had some basic, self taught skills. When tryouts came around Beth was excited and nervous. They had over 70 girls show up for the try outs. It was almost twice as many as tried out last year. Again I figured the odds were against her. She made the first cut which went from 70 girls down to 25 girls. I was impressed. Then after another day of tryouts she made the second cut to the 17 girls that were to be the 2011 Rudd Lady Indians. I was so happy and proud of Beth. She was ecstatic, of course. Rather than thinking that she could stop, back off or quit practicing she got even more into it and we started practicing more. She went to a volleyball clinic at Samford over the summer. It was required for all players on the team. She had a blast at clinic and you could tell that she refined a lot of her basic skills and learned the rules of the game.
Finally, the season and practices started. She really seemed to be enjoying and getting better and better. Her confidence and skill really seemed to be growing.
Rudd was invited to play in a pre-season jamboree. They played 4 games and Beth got to play in the last one. Beth was very inexperienced. She didn't know where to stand or how to rotate through the positions. However, she played with some confidence and even though the team wasn't playing very well Beth held her own, she returned several serves and served several balls to the other team that they didn't return. I found out after the fact that she had bent her thumbnail back and it was bleeding during the game and she kept on playing. She showed some toughness and I thought that she could really have a chance to do well at this. I was very proud of her first effort and she really seemed to enjoy it. We left the game very optimistic about her team and her chances to play and grow. In a few short months she had gone from knowing nothing about volley ball to playing in a tournament and scoring points on the other team and doing her part. We left very excited and encouraged.
Part 2 Coming Soon.
