Despite hours of training and dedication, no one really prepares athletes to eventually say goodbye to the sport they’ve learned to love – and that’s the hard truth.
This only came to my attention the moment I faced the final loss of my volleyball career, just around this time last year. It was the third set of our national quarter final. After being neck-and-neck for a majority of the match, my team had barely lost after a controversial referee call. A bittersweet ending, to say the least, let alone on a random court, in a faraway gym, and within the early hours of the morning. I think all my teammates could agree, but as whistles blew and post-game handshakes commenced, the only feeling I could genuinely muster was confusion: …what now?
The Beginning
My sister was the original volleyball player of the family. In elementary school, I remember going to her games and watching all the teams play, admiring how close-knit the sport naturally was and how cute the hairstyles, cheers, and jerseys were. After finally joining in sixth grade myself, hours upon hours of practice in school gyms and on blazing sand courts, yearly tryouts, week-long bootcamps, and timely commutes were sacrificed in favour of reaching my best shape as an athlete. Even then, my work ethic towards volleyball was only fostered from my initial love for soccer – a sport in which I had previously played for around nine years before transitioning over. Through both activities, I’d built long-lasting relationships with teammates, coaches, and even myself throughout a competitive environment, and these developments branched out into other areas of my life in the best ways possible – many of which are still thriving today.
The Past & Present
Now that time has allowed me to truly reflect on it, I think the root cause of my concern was the possibility that all my dedication was just a waste of time. More specifically, what about my parents? After all, they were the ones who listened to my five-year-old self when I wanted to join soccer and supported me as I pursued this athletic drive until graduating. Through all of this, they travelled past borders in every mode of transportation, gave me post-game reports that I hated hearing in the moment (but really did learn from and appreciate), and showed up to every single match of mine no matter what circumstance: a workday, pouring rain, a blowout score, etc. But to not have excelled to the post-secondary phase as an athlete despite having such a supported upbringing, the thought that I’d disappointed them always crept in my mind. To be brutally honest, I still think about what could’ve been if I were just a bit better, a bit taller, a bit more athletic. Would just a bit more effort had gotten me to a completely different state?
Such an abrupt ending to my volleyball career had shifted my optimism into thinking in absolutes. Since I’d come of age, hadn’t been recruited, and was starting university soon, my mind was sure this was the end of my athletic career and the time to start taking on adult life. With time, I only grew more overwhelmed as several factors began to pile up: becoming independent, moving away from home, pursuing a degree that would set up the rest of my life, getting a real job…blah blah blah. All of these new responsibilities clashed at once, and I wouldn’t have an outlet and sense of community to rely on like the one I had so carefully fostered before. Growing up in such a close-knit sports environment – which had taught me many, many lessons – made it difficult to imagine a life without it. Just like when thinking about my volleyball past, the future that followed also posed uncertainty, doubt, and the dawning question of “what if”?
The…end?
In summary, I basically thought I had “aged out” of the life I was living at the time, and that it was up to me to start from the ground up in this new, scary phase – since sports were no longer an option. That bittersweet quarter-final game was only a catalyst towards growing older and moving on blindly into whatever my life held. Especially having had no plans to pursue volleyball in the coming years, I’d lose the relationships built within that network of teammates and coaches, which could also affect further aspects of my life, and so on and so forth. That was it – the end.
Now that a year has passed, it’s much easier to dissect this dilemma; but more importantly, I’ve had time to bring myself back to reality. Time continues to pass on its own agenda (despite my beliefs) – yet the pressure of growing up was a phase that only I rushed. At the peak of my concern, and being caught up in a whirlwind of missed opportunities and new ones coming in hot, I’d failed to stay in the present. Anxiousness and uncertainty naturally clouded my mind until I couldn’t see the significance of the point in my life I had reached: freshly graduated and an emerging young adult, with lots of time left to figure myself out and to continue on with the things I loved – including volleyball.
All of this to say, coming to an end with a sport I’ve held so closely throughout my life was more than difficult, as is anything that involves chipping away a part of my childhood. But this wording is key; chipped, not broken off. It’s unfair to dwell on what I could’ve done differently, as sports – being such a deeply rooted passion – will always be a huge part of me. Even getting back on the court a year after that loss at nationals, I was shocked at how natural it felt to pass a ball again. Similarly, my network of relationships surrounding volleyball hadn’t just disappeared. Rather, it remains alive and well as I continue to reunite with old teammates and give back to the community that I’m still a part of – despite having graduated and supposedly “moved on”. My biggest takeaway was that that final whistle never indicated the end of my athletic journey – nor the start of adult life. While it was a wakeup call towards thinking about my past and future, it also marked a milestone of maturity and pointed me towards the exciting journey to come.
Things haven’t changed at all, really. So to answer the question of “what now?”, my advice to my past self would be to continue moving forward as you do; things might look different as time passes, but your passions remain the same as you keep feeding the fire.
“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional”
– Chili Davis
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