I wrote this about a player I coached 1997-2000 (high school and club)--yes, a quarter-century ago. Yes, I'm old.
I mention that first because it was what triggered this post. We talk about the effect coaches have on players all the time--but ultimately, the reverse is also true. Coach-player interactions ae symbiotic. If you don't learn from your players, if they do not inspire you, there is something drastically wrong with your situation.
Over 30+ years of coaching, I've got a lot of stories about players showing courage, doing great things, growing up...but as I gear up to coach again (yay)--one person and her story stays stuck in my mind.
Her name's Summer. I recruited Summer during the Fall of 2014 for our 2015 roster. Summer was a middle blocker, six feet tall with a strong block. My impression was she was a step slower than our middles and would be less effective in a fast offense but that her blocking ability made up for that. Just as important, everyone I talked to about her said she was a hard worker and a great kid. For me, those are more important things.
There's a catch--during the process (I know this now, but not at the time), Summer was thinking she didn't want to play volleyball anymore--maybe she'd just go be a regular college student. Still, we were close to home and it'd mean inexpensive school for at least two years and there were worse ways to spend time than playing volleyball. [A good question--if I'd known any of this, would I have put effort into recruiting her??...guess it's good to not know everything, right?]
So we get to June 2015, Summer is working on conditioning so she'd be ready (no entering player is ever ready....). She went out running, was halfway thru, and...for no reason, her pelvis/hip shattered. She wound up in the hospital--I went to visit (she doesn't remember since she was on serious morphine/pain killers) and her dad showed me the X-ray...it was a frickin' jigsaw puzzle with screws and everything else in there.
Her dad said it was going to be a long road, but they were confident she'd walk again.
Walk again.
We'll fast forward a bit. Summer was up with a walker by August or so, able to make it to class and sometimes to watch practice. She worked on her rehab and by the end of the year, she was sitting with us on the bench for matches. She still wasn't free to walk--she was using crutches, but that's better than a walker. It's also better than never walking again. When we made it to Nationals--we made sure she was in the picture--and made sure she couldn't fall either. That was important to me because she was part of the team even without playing a second.
Months passed and we got to Spring, 2016. Summer was walking...she was jogging, and in the last week or so of spring season, Summer was cleared for moderate participation in practice. No diving, if jumping hurt--needed to stop, things like that. A kid who was told they'd be happy if she walked again was playing volleyball once again!
I had a conversation with her--that spring was when she admitted she'd debated giving up volleyball and told me that when she fell and knew she was injured, she immediately worried about playing, realized what playing meant to her. She used that as motivation for her recovery. What she wanted was taken away--and she wanted it back!
In the Fall of 2016, Summer came in having played in one competitive set of volleyball for two years...and fought her way to a starting spot. She'd lost some mobility as a middle--too much to play there (also because we had an all-American come in...) but she proved a great right-side blocker. We played 49 matches that year, 169 sets. Summer was the only person to play in every match, starting 17 of them (we used a 6-2 so 'starters' regularly changed) and played in 131 of those sets, finishing third on the team in blocks. To get an idea of how good she was--we played the #3 ranked NJCAA D1 team (we were D2) and beat them because of Summer. She hit 11-1-23 (.435) with four blocks--which obviously doesn't include the dozen or so which wound up as controlled digs. This is a kid they hoped would be able to walk again only thirteen months earlier. She helped us to a national title game,
I've never seen someone work so hard for something in my life as Summer did on her rehab--and then the personal intensity she brought to practice. Every day, she practiced like it was the last time she'd have a chance to play. She took nothing for granted.
And I'm writing this thinking--why can't other players work that hard? Why didn't *I* work that hard 24/7/365? And I'm thinking about that a bunch since I'm planning to coach again. COVID took that away from me--leaving the question of whether I'd ever be able to coach again, whether I should even keep writing about coaching (why bother if you aren't ever going to do it again would be that logic...)?
The great thing--what's important to me with young people and me as a coach--Summer took that work ethic and determination and wound up academic all-conference and academic all-American to boot. After LLCC, she chose not to play further to focus on her studies and when she was done with that, she picked up a Master's in a tough program--a field that permits her to make a difference for other people.
I hope reading this--it gives you inspiration. I hope you can use it with your young people when they are facing a challenge or injury. Adversity isn't the end. It's a potential opportunity for personal growth. It's how we face adversity and challenges that matters.
And that's up to me.
All I know is Summer made a difference for me in how I've approached my life especially the past six months...though if she reads this, it'll be the first she hears of it.
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