“Kendama teaches you everything you need to know about college athletics,” said Amy Watanabe, one of my MSU Denver volleyball coaches. “It’s failure, trusting the process, the moments of victory when you finally do it. That’s perseverance in a nutshell.”
I didn’t know what kendama was until I committed to play volleyball at MSU Denver. It is a wooden Japanese toy comprised of a ball on a string, several cups used to catch the ball in different variations, and a narrowed end with which you use to “stick” the hole in the ball.
Completing the four-step kendama is considered initiation into this program, a feat recognized as your entrance into the “kendama club,” providing you with the small, yet satisfactory knowledge that comes from asserting yourself in tradition.
I’m writing this on the bus with my team as we travel to Texas for the regional finals. Limbs are sprawled across the aisle while some sleep and others are encircled around a card game. We are guaranteed only one match heading into this weekend. From now on, it’s do or die on the road to a National Championship.
There are the milestones: the titles, the rival matches, the hard-fought wins and losses, and then there are all the millions of moments in between: the bus rides, the candid conversations, team meals and comedic mix-ups. What started out as a middle-school activity has become the most significant vessel of connection and experience that I have known this far in my life.
If I’m being honest, the glamor of college athletics is minuscule. You get a kill to score a point and your face lights up on a jumbo screen with your name booming through the speakers, but such details slip your notice with the crowd in a frenzy. You look to your teammates. Cheers ensue until focus sets in again. There’s another point to play.
These are the moments. The ones you think of when it’s 5:30 a.m. and your car is iced over and you’re thinking, “No one should be awake right now.” But you have weights and conditioning at 6. When you’re beaten down with exhaustion and expectation, potential glory often provides an extra push. But most times it’s the person next to you.
I fell in love with the game because there seemed to be few things more fun than keeping a ball off of the floor. While this is still true, time has broadened my affection. I remember entering my freshman year of pre-season freaked out and filled to the brim with the excitement of reaching my potential. The year-round frenzy of high school practices, club tournaments, camps, clinics and early morning open gyms had all pointed toward a chance to play at the next level.
Each year starts the same. The team and coaches report to campus at the beginning of August. We are expected to be in shape, ready to face a week of fitness tests and twice-a-day practice sessions. The first game day always arrives like a breath of fresh air, the chance to finally suit up and compete. Over time, the nerves and adrenaline start to quell as trust begins to build within yourself. Confidence is one thing, but conviction is deeper, and in my freshman season I was sowing the roots.
That was until COVID-19 entered the scene. The progress, the potential, all of it had come to a grinding halt. Then, freefall. I was sent home, spending months fretting about nutrition, staying in shape, obsessing over anything that would make me feel as though I had a sense of control again. I returned to campus ready to play, but felt as though I was different, a shell of the athlete I once was.
After three seasons at University of Hartford in Connecticut, I decided to wander back west and transferred to MSU Denver in January 2022. A change of place was needed, particularly after the emotional whiplash that was the result of trying to combine the logistics of pandemic protocol and sport.
MSU Denver Volleyball proudly touts itself as being a winning culture, having made it to the conference finals and advancing to the NCAA tournament for a consecutive 23 years. Anyone will tell you, however, that winning is hard. The years that come before have little to do with the one at hand, meaning that each day is treated as a new commitment of time, focus and effort to those around you. Thus, it’s important to like the people you’re with. Training and showing up on the court is one thing, but cultivating a space of love and acceptance is just as crucial to success, and absolutely the best part.
Photo by Edward Jacobs Jr.
The best teams, in my opinion, are those who recognize the potential sphere of influence they possess and take it seriously. If there is anything I have learned over the past five years, it’s that we need each other more than we may think and that sports offers a relentless, beautiful confrontation with this truth.
There is your team on the court, and then there are the radiating rings of parents, teachers, kids, players past and players to come who stand around you as you take part in something uniquely greater than yourself. I like to imagine that my middle-school self would be proud to know where volleyball would end up taking her. From Connecticut to Croatia, the sport that started out as a hobby became the most significant catalyst for connection and growth that I have known so far in my life.
Anyone will change in the span of five years. But to have had a consistent set of friends and supporters taking a dedicated interest in my success has so directly shaped my sense of self that I hesitate at the thought of having to leave it all behind.
But, as my teammates will tell you, “It’s bigger than volleyball.” And they are right. To try and epitomize the lessons that I have learned in my time as a collegiate athlete would be insufficient (and probably pretty cheesy).
Instead, I can’t help but refer to the film “Cool Runnings,” which seems to sum up my greatest takeaway as I step into the real game of life. “Peace be the journey,” they say. And no matter the outcome, you are always enough.