Life of Vballmonkey (580)

Practice everyday. Match nights on Tuesdays. Tournaments on the weekends. Film sessions every week. All a part of being a high school athlete. This is what the Kennedy Volleyball Squad does for a third of the school year. Since we are spending so much time together, they become a second family.
In the beginning, practices start much sooner than the season. This year we had open gyms as early as  the last month of school before the summer! We had open gyms and strength training all summer, followed by camps later in the summer, and for varsity a couple tournaments. Our official practices started on August 10th, two weeks before school started, and since there was no school, we could have two-a-days! Then when school started, it was back to one practice a week. Our practices are right after school at 3:15 to about 5:30 or 6, but sometimes they go late.
We don't have to have morning practice, although we have had one. We keep that option open for Fridays sometimes if people want to go to a football game, but it doesn't usually happen. The one time it did was for the homecoming game, since one of our players made top seven for homecoming queen.
On the few practices before a tough match, we watch game film on the team we are playing. We take notes on who and what to watch for, what we need to change for the match, what match-ups we need to have, and what we need to do to win the match. In the next practice or run through we will practice these line ups to get ready for the game.
Match nights are my favorite thing about school volleyball. I love playing in front of the crowds and student sections with pressure and loud voices yelling. We start the night right after school with a run through (a mini practice), then if its a home or in town game we have to be back to the gym at 5:15. If it's an away game, we wither leave right after school or before school's over depending on how far away we have to go. When we get to the gym, we watch the sophomore play for a little while, then we pump up in the locker room, one of my favorite things. After that, we warm up in the halls before we take the court to warm up. Then, its GAME TIME. After the game we ride the bus back to Kennedy or if its a home game we go home. When I get home it is ALWAYS hard to go to bed. I'm still pumped up from the game, and especially after a win there's a lot going on on social media about the game, which of course I want to look at!
On some weekends we have tournaments. These tournaments are one day tournaments that are no longer than two and a half hours away, and usually on a Saturday. Most of the time these tournaments don't conflict with anything, but this year one of our tournaments was on the same day as homecoming. Our tournament was in Osage, two hours away, and we all hustled back and got to homecoming a little late.
We put in a lot of time to be a part of this team, and in the end it is worth it.

Follow @vballmonkey on twitter for updates and a closer look at the Kennedy Volleyball Team!
https://twitter.com/Vballmonkey