Stepping onto the other side of the net

A personal reflection on my time as a volleyball player and how returning to the sport after a many-year hiatus helped me to reconnect with my younger self.

Katie McNabb with her U14 Apex club volleyball team. // Photo courtesy of Cristin Sheer

Sneakers squeaking against a dusty gym floor, a stinky backpack full of knee pads, ankle braces and old protein bar wrappers and complaints from players as they struggle to put up the net. Together, these built up what was my second home for many years: the volleyball court.

Volleyball was one of the biggest parts of my life growing up; however, like many childhood passions, it eventually became a commitment I could no longer make. Leaving the sport was like saying goodbye to a childhood friend who was moving away.

For many years, I longed for a way to reconnect with the thing that had been such a huge part of my life growing up, but it wasn’t until I saw a job posting for a coaching position that I actually felt some hope for a return to my childhood passion. When I stepped into the gym a week later to coach my new team for the very first time, it was like I had walked through a time machine, and a little piece of me that I didn’t even know was missing had been put back in its place.

From soccer cleats to knee pads

Growing up as a soccer kid, I was not happy when my mom told me she was taking me to a volleyball club open house to learn about the teams that were recruiting. At the time, I’m sure it’s because I thought I was “so committed” to soccer, and volleyball wasn’t a very cool sport, but looking back, I know I was just scared of stepping out of my comfort zone.

That fear quickly dissipated, though, when a couple of older club players walked into the warehouse with perfect high ponytails tied in cute ribbons and athletic, yet somehow super cute, outfits composed of slides, joggers and sweatshirts.

Volleyball quickly became very cool.

I wanted to be those girls, which meant trying out for a team, so that’s exactly what I did.

That year I joined a developmental club team, a team designed for new players that is meant to be less competitive and more focused on teaching the fundamentals of volleyball. By the end of the season I had bought every bit of volleyball gear, and I was spending an hour each day practicing serving against my garage.

The dream of becoming an all-star volleyball player had seated itself deep in my mind and heart.

A growing passion

My love for volleyball only grew over the next few years.

In my second year of playing, I joined a more competitive club team with some of my friends from school, and when I wasn’t playing for my club team, I was doing camps or skills clinics. I don’t think a day went by that I didn’t play for at least a few minutes, unless I was sick or out of the country.

I decorated my room with volleyball stickers, pillows, blankets and posters, and I was the proud owner of more volleyballs than one person could ever need.

I’d pretty much made the sport my entire personality.

On top of that, volleyball had become a huge bonding activity for me and my dad. He loved taking me to camps and watching me play from the side — he took me to watch nearby college games, and we played together in my yard on more evenings than I can count.

In many ways, I think the way volleyball brought my dad and I so much closer was one of the biggest reasons I loved playing so much.

It wasn’t long before the thing I had once loved more than anything else became one of the biggest sources of my anxiety and insecurity.

When an escape becomes a trap

Near the end of eighth grade and my fourth year playing volleyball, I started to struggle with anxiety and a lot of negative self-image issues.The more I struggled with my mental health, the more I struggled with playing volleyball.

I suddenly took it very personally when a coach or teammate criticized my playing (even if it was in a constructive way), and I no longer had the confidence to be loud on the court — something all good volleyball players have to do.

If these struggles didn’t permanently damage my relationship with volleyball, the next club team I played for certainly did.

The team I played for the following year was run by two coaches who seemed to love nothing more than using our practices to show off how good they were and making us run lines until we had tears in our eyes.

I hate that I let one team have such a big impact on my feelings toward volleyball, but I also know there’s a lot of evidence to show that coaches tend to be one of the main contributors to their players’ loss of confidence, and that’s exactly what happened with me. So when it came time to try out for a team the following year, I cried to my dad and told him I didn’t want to play club again.

He kindly told me it was OK and I shouldn’t do anything I didn’t want to do, but I still knew he was a little disappointed.

I played for my high school the following year, but a year off from club proved to be pretty detrimental to my growth as a player.

When it came time for us to play the last game of the season, somewhere deep inside I knew it was the last real game of volleyball I’d ever play.

I was right.

I decided not to try out for the team my senior year of high school, knowing my chances of making varsity at a school with dozens of state championship titles under its belt were slim, and that even if I did make it, I wasn’t sure I’d have any fun.

I wasn’t playing volleyball for the first time in seven years, and for someone who used to dream of playing in college, that was a hard reality to swallow.

Coming back

I avoided the whole sport of volleyball for the next couple years.

Watching my school team play made me too sad, and when I got to college, I chose not to play on an intramural team because if I couldn’t play for real, I didn’t want to play at all.

As time went on, though, I started to miss it desperately. So I asked friends to play with me when the weather was nice, and I even joined an intramural team when they started up again after school went back in person.

Even though the team was casual and certainly not all that skilled, it reminded me how fun it is to play as part of a team.

As I began my final year of college, and was overwhelmed with all the adult decisions I was having to make, I started looking for open coaching positions, desperate for a fun escape during one of the most stressful times of my life. At first I found nothing, but just when my stress and anxiety started to reach its peak, I saw an open position for a club volleyball coach.

I applied and was hired the following week.

After hearing I got the job, I experienced imposter syndrome for the first time in my life. They really trusted me, someone who hadn’t played a real game of organized volleyball in four years, to coach and mentor a team of young girls?

That anxiety carried over into our first practice, where I frantically tried to remember what club practices were like when I played so I didn’t make a complete fool of myself in front of my new team.

It wasn’t long before it all came back to me and pretty soon, I was running drills and planning team bonding events as if I’d never left. With each passing week, I saw how my coaching was impacting the girls, not just as players, but as people too.

Whether it was lessons on hard work, leadership or treating each other with kindness, coaching this team showed me how playing sports teaches us to be better at much more than just the sport itself. This is part of what makes playing sports so beneficial, especially at a young age.

Coaching this team and watching many of the girl’s experiences playing club volleyball for the first time helped me to reconnect with myself at their age before my relationship with the sport was damaged by outside factors.

So after walking off the court as the coach of this team for the very last time, I can only hope I was able to have a positive impact on them and their experience with volleyball so they might be able to continue loving it like I wish I had been able to.