Don’t Say “Volleyball”
When I was eight, I would silently sulk at the dinner table, counting how many times the word “volleyball” was said. My sister, who is two years older than me, had declared her dream of attending Stanford University to play volleyball. And my parents were going to do everything in their power to help their ten year old get to California. Volleyball had since dominated our lives.
Every spare second in our household was spent talking about training, games, coaches, teammates, and tournaments. Weekends became six hour drives to watch twelve hours of mediocre middle school volleyball , sleeping in crappy hotels, and being hauled to her team dinners. So I dragged my feet, whining, complaining, and crying, for every second of it. Woe was me.
Twelve year old Claudia stuntin’ in her pink shoes :)
But then when I turned ten, it was my turn to join this world. By the time I was fourteen, I was playing on one of the top teams in Michigan, skipping school on Fridays in order to get to tournaments. It consumed every aspect of my life for those four years. I would come home from school and do jump training, go to conditioning for two hours, followed by a three hour practice. I lived and breathed for the sport. But my first year on a national team, I had a coach named Eliza. Eliza’s version of coaching was three hours of verbally berating her fifteen year old girls until we went home in tears. I was absolutely petrified of her. Please let me quit. Please. I can’t take it. My mom would get me to practice twenty minutes early and I would spend those twenty minutes crying and begging her not to make me go inside.
The thing about coaches that are bullies is that it breeds bullying on the team. I was a benchwarmer that season, and it meant I was at the bottom of the totem pole. When you’re fifteen years old it’s hard to separate the competition for playing time, with the community of your team. The coach has to set the precedent of how teammates treat each other on and off the court. Eliza fed fuel to the fire of fifteen year old mean girls.
After that season I quit playing competitively. I played on a few lower level teams, and met coaches that did everything they could to reignite my love for volleyball. Coaches like Steve and Jessie did backbends to get me to fall back in love with the game. But it was too late. It had become a chore. When I played, all I could hear was Eliza's shrill screeching in my head. By the time college scouts were interested, I was donating my shoes to Goodwill.
My final season
But in the ten years I dedicated to volleyball, I missed a key aspect of the sport. Not once had I turned to volleyball for community. I picked up a few good friends along the way, but in general, I felt that my teammates were as much my competitors as the other team. So when someone suggested I join a volleyball team here in Madrid, I hesitated. I didn’t need to relive the trauma of never feeling like I was enough.
But in January, the stars were aligning and a friend texted me asking me to come to a club tryout with her. The team was coed, and as a hitter I wasn’t interested in playing with men, but I figured it would be a funny anecdote down the line. That time I tried out for a Spanish volleyball team. So, at nine o’clock at night I dragged myself forty five minutes to the Winions volleyball tryouts. Walking in the gym I had one thought. There’s no way I’m joining this team.
I’ve now been a member of The Winions (it’s not in fact a Despicable Me reference but a League of Legends reference…) for the past five months. We wear neon yellow jerseys with faces on them, and our cheer goes “Win, Win, Winions!!”. Some members of the team began playing this year, and some have played the majority of their lives. For me, practices are a mix of being completely lost in the Spanish of it all, and being made fun of for how red I turn. Our coach calls me Fresa. But I couldn’t love this team more. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the volleyball. It’s about the strange mix of Spaniards, expats, and immigrant, men and women, who embraced me onto their team. It’s about the game nights, the weekly climbing sessions I’ve cajoled them into, and the constant banter. The Spanish playlists they’ve made for me, the offers to babysit Cinder, and the constant accommodation of speaking English. They never get frustrated with me when I’m lost (which is often) whether it’s cultural, linguistic, or literal, and they love to culture shock me with new foods, new places, and new phrases. They laugh easily, they’re loud and authentic, and they’ve cultivated an environment that gives me permission to do the same.
Post winning finals!
The Winions are without a doubt some of the kindest people I’ve met, and they’ve helped me to find my place here in Madrid. From the first practice, I couldn’t articulate why I switched gears and decided to join a coed volleyball team that practices until almost midnight, and occasionally gets crushed in games. But thank God I did because not only did they reshape my experience in Spain, they revived my love for volleyball. The immense pressure that I had always thought was synonymous with the word “volleyball” has begun to fade, and I’m able to identify with the sport again. I still have moments when I need to remind myself to emotionally disengage - when I wonder how I’ve played for so long and still miss serves - but playing on a team where we can still laugh after we lose is a reminder that the identity of “a volleyball player” is not as singular as I grew up believing. I can talk about the game without wondering if I threw in the towel too early, or if I should have dedicated my teenage years to something more fulfilling. Because if any of it had changed, I never would have found our little community of Winions. And for them, I am endlessly grateful.