Communication Breakdown

I think I might have reached one of the highest moments of frustration in recent memory last night. We had our Tuesday night volleyball game, which is the competitive league so the competition is very good. We were playing a team that included a couple of members of the men’s club team (which happens to be the #1 men’s team in our region) so I knew it would be a tough game, but I still wanted to win so badly since I knew the two players and I really don’t care for one of them very much. We ended up blowing the first game, even though we could have won it if we communicated a little better. For our team, that has always been a problem. Even when we designate a setter and hitters, we still have trouble deciding who will hit on the first or second pass. Because of that, we often get out of position for hitting and blocking and many times have to give the other team a free ball instead of getting a hit at the net. Our first game exemplified this tendency of ours.
The second game we communicated very well and pulled away quickly to a big lead. Unfortunately, we played a little slow towards the end and let them catch back up, be we pulled it out to even the games at 1-1. Our main problem with the second game (and in general) is that one of our key players over the last couple years has really been on a decline in play. His spikes are often hitting the net when he tries for the kill and he seems to just give up when he doesn’t do good. It’s also frustrating when he serves because he tries so many different weird serves to try and get aces, but many times they will fail to simply get over the net or will go flying out of bounds. This gets to be a big problem as you need to serve the ball in bounds if you want to have a chance of putting some points on the board. Despite our difficulty in our second game, we came to win and play the third.

In our league the third game is always rally scoring (side outs count as points as well as served points). Our team just shut down in this final game. I made an interesting observation in this last game. Our team is usually pretty good about getting digs (we used to be horrible at it, but over the years we’ve gotten pretty decent). One member of our team, in this final game, would not try for digs on any of the hits near her. She simply flinched and moved away from them, or made no try for them. What made me even more frustrated is that earlier in the year she had commented on how untalented I was on the volleyball court. If you make a comment like that, I would assume that you are in a position of possessing more talent to make that judgment, but it was apparent that this person just wasn’t trying and didn’t care.

We lost that third game because we just seemed to give up. I’m not trying to rip our team down, but it just sucks to see our team fall apart like that and for some of our members to just stop trying. How can you win if you don’t even try? I was just so frustrated, especially since we had lost to a team that I really don’t personally care for……ok, I’m done. I just had to vent and get that off of my chest.

On a good note, I had night class last night, but only for about 30 seconds instead of the 3 hours it usually is. It was great! I walked into the classroom and one of my classmates told me to turn in the section of my research paper that I’d finished and that I could go. Our professor had to be somewhere else for the night (I think it was a medical emergency in his family, but I’m not sure), so no class. This isn’t the first time I’ve had this class shortened or canceled lately. This is actually the third class in a row that has been canceled. The first was canceled because of a job fair for the seniors, the second was canceled because there was a meeting for all computer science majors, and last night’s was canceled for reasons stated before. That’s a solid 9 hours of class that I haven’t had to have. Thank goodness too, because I really can’t stand that class. Every time we have had class, all we do is present on our topic for like 10 minutes and then listen to the rest of the class present on theirs. I don’t care about anyone else’s topic and they don’t care about mine, so this class is always pointless.