Blog #8: Volleyball Preseason Day 1
Well, as you all should know by now, I am a senior on the women’s volleyball team; which means that this is my last year to ever play and represent ERAU as a student-athlete. As crazy as it seems, I am anxious for the start of season but sad that this will be my last. I have seen our volleyball program grow so much in the past four years that I have been apart of it, that I am really excited to see our team push our way to Nationals this year…but there is always the burden of going through the much dreaded preseason first.
Our coach cooked something up for us new this year: on our first day of training (which was August 4, 2008), we drove to the rope course at Northern Arizona University (NAU) to learn about team building, communication, trust, and about building our relationships with each other. My teammates and I have learned a lot about ourselves and what goals we wanted to set for ourselves and each other. There was a ‘rubber ducky’ challenge, where we were split into two teams, each having their hula hoop empty. Between our teams was a hula hoop filled with rubber ducks, and our main objective was to see which team could end up with the most ducks in their hoop. We all started sprinting back-and-forth between the main hoop and our own hoops along with stealing from our opponent’s hoop. The leader of the activity just gave us strange looks for the ten minutes that we were sprinting (and I am sure that coach was happy that we did sprint). One of our teammates thought of putting all the rubber ducks into the main hoop and place both of our hula hoops over the main hoop. Yes, we finally got the message from that: we are ONE team, and if we should ever have a division between us we will never get anywhere.
We also did a few communication exercises before a lightning storm decided to roll on it. We went into their indoor rope course, and dude, I was excited! Everyone did the flying squirrel (which basically means one person will run in the opposite direction of her six teammates pulling her on the other end of the rope and therefore fly and be suspended into the air for a bit until her teammates slowly bring her back to the ground). The second team ropes activity was basically trying to balance on a wooden platform with your teammates pulling you up on both sides. Our teammate’s job was to make sure that the wooden platform would stay horizontal on the journey up. Once each person got to the top, we rang the bell and then slowly be dropped back down to earth. Next were the individual tests: rock climbing, rope ladder climbing, and air-swings. I officially LOVE rock climbing!!! I did two of the five rock climbing courses that they had. It took me about eight minutes to get to the top for one since I had a difficult time trying find some grip rocks for my shoes.
We ended with learning our new favorite game called “HAIYA!” Basically it’s a ‘samurai’ game where we all bow to each other in the beginning and then act out like we are slicing each other in the stomach while passing on the ‘HAIYA’ to someone else. You will all probably see us playing this games a few times around school or even before our matches to pump us up (not like we need to get more pumped up in a game, but it is fun to play).
In the end, our team learned very valuable lessons and has created goals from our activity: 1- Trust is definitely a huge part of our small team, and we need to trust each other that we will all do our jobs to the best of our ability. 2- Respecting our selves will allow us to respect our teammates, peers, and our opponents. 3- Speaking the truth allows us everyone on our team to know how one is feeling. 4- Playing hard is a key goal to our success as a volleyball team…especially for our last goal: 5= NATIONALS!!!!