Knowing what DOESN'T work
A recollection of the worst volleyball season of my life and why it was my favorite
It’s easy to celebrate wins, from making the best meal to writing a cool song. Hell, even when my sports team wins I take credit (go Dodgers). But more often than not, I find myself thinking about failure and how I wish I could have done things differently. It sucks to fixate on it. I try to practice gratitude to lift myself out of that deep chasm, but the rope to lift me out only reaches so deep.
I ultimately find that what helps me move on from failure is recognizing the lessons it teaches me. I try to construe the results into something I can learn from. What can failing to cook my pasta properly for my homemade spaghettios (real story) teach me? Probably that it’s best to recognize that themodernnonna.com may not be the best teacher and I should jazz up the instructions a bit. Cooking disasters aside, there’s a failure from my life that is not only my greatest teacher, but one of my fondest memories.
I played competitive volleyball for 9 years from middle school through college. I’ve got the misshapen bones and sore shoulder to prove it (I found a photo of my ankle that looks like a grapefruit, but I’ll spare you that one). I was on good teams, bad teams, medium teams, but my favorite team I was on was the worst of them all.
2010, I was a sophomore in high school, struggling with physics homework and who to ask to Winter Formal. I had a year of high school volleyball under my belt with an eccentric coach, as well as some additional club experience (if you’re familiar with AAU for Basketball, it’s the same sort of thing for volleyball). We lost several Senior Players. To my count, for the 2010 season, we only had 4 seniors and a smattering of juniors. Pickins’ were slim, and injuries decimated our already thin depth, which meant I was thrust into a starting position that my height and experience did not justify.
We were Bad. Really REALLY bad.
There were 8 regular season games. We lost all of them. I recently checked back with our overall record, and we won four out of twenty-nine games. To make matters worse, There was one game we played that nearly broke me.
For those unfamiliar with the sport, volleyball requires 6 players on the court. After you win a possession, you “rotate” clockwise so that each player on the court ends up in each position. There are substitutions and designated front row and back row players, but that’s where I’ll end explaining this silly little game I used to play to avoid boring you with the minutiae.
My position was Middle Blocker, a specialist position in the front row, responsible for blocking… in the middle… you get it.
On this particular Friday, at a high school tournament in La Crescenta, we were playing as poorly as we usually did. So poorly that we were relegated to the practice gym, where the losers bracket would go. Our last opponent of the day was a team that, on the surface, looked sorrier than ours. The 6 people required to play? They only had 5.
Our team sucked, but we still had pride. We could have taken the artificial W, as they didn’t have enough players to field a team. But we needed to earn a Win. It had been far too much losing.
I don’t even remember if the tournament officially counted the game; they surely were not concerned about the results of the garbage bracket. But how it worked was the 5-person team would have a “ghost” player. They would rotate the 6 positions just like a fully constructed team, but when that 6th fake player had their turn to serve, the team would lose a point, and the possession would become ours.
Easy win, right?
Nope! But it gets worse.
The game went horribly. As a group, we underestimated our opponent vastly. Silly, considering my band of losers had yet to prove we could eke out a victory anywhere else. Why were we entitled a W here?
The absolute trough of failure happened on the last possession. In Volleyball, you win by two. It was the last set of 3, we were tied 1-1. Amazingly, despite our numbers advantage, we were down 15-14. Game point.
And here you have me: Scrawny Benny with his oversized kneepads, loose-fitting jersey, and mop top haircut. My job was simple: just stop the ball from coming over the net without touching the net.
After they served, we send the ball back over. They bobble it around a bit but manage to keep the play alive. They send an easy ball over towards our side, right towards me. I wasn’t experienced enough for my role, but this task was simple: put up your hands and prevent it from hitting our side.
I failed pretty spectacularly. For whatever reason, my nerves or perhaps blind confidence, I couldn’t stop the easy floater. I think I made contact, but I did such an amazing job of avoiding the penalty of touching the net that the ball fell between my hands and the net and landed right at my feet.
We lost on the last game of the day to a team that had no business being there, and it was all my fault.
Fortunately, this was the low point of my volleyball career that would continue for another 7 years…
Yet despite that year filled with athletic despair, I think about it often as one of my favorite teams. From a numbers perspective, we were dreadful. There is no denying that. However, I miss the guys who endured the defeat with me. Despite our circumstances, the camaraderie was high. We had dedicated every day of the week to wear a certain piece of clothing to practice.
Muscle T Mondays, Tank Top Tuesdays, All-White Wednesdays (I promise this was merely matching the alliteration pattern and not a stand for racial supremacy).
We had our inside jokes, impressions of our coach, and characters on the team that offered comic relief.
Beyond that, it taught me the old Edison principle of what doesn’t work. Don’t put people in a position to fail when building a competitive team. When playing an opponent with a disadvantage, don’t take it for granted, but exploit it instead.
I know that leadership plays a part in this as well. I looked towards fellow players to lead the team. We had a captain that kept cool despite the losses, but we really could have used a coach that better understood our strengths and weaknesses in order to scheme against our opponents properly.
I think a lot about that five-person team, how great a day it must have been for them. They had suffered the same losses we did that day, up until playing us. We found ourselves in the same place on the bracket.
Circumstances on that specific day led them to only having 5 players. I wonder how the team felt once they got back together with a full squad. Did they go on a winning streak? Was it a one-and-done?
I’m not entirely sure, and I’ll never know the answer, but getting stuck into what-ifs brings me nothing but a sink into the quicksand of cognitive dissonance.
I’m grateful for that shitty team. I’m grateful for the silly rituals. I’m grateful for the camaraderie we built through the suck. It helped me get through a difficult time in school, one that felt like I was a loser who couldn’t figure out basic physics problems.
That team taught me that even when everything sucks, I can still find the routine and techniques to make it suck just a little bit less.
This is not the only failure I’ve experienced in sports. It’s not the only failure I’ve experienced in life. The failures and losses I have experienced in life are minuscule in the grand scheme of the struggles of the world.
I continue to practice gratitude every day of my life.
My inbox is littered with reminders of the ghosts of things I’ve tried and failed before: the domains purchased for businesses that never materialized, the youtube channel ideas that don’t exist. Hell, you’re reading a newsletter that’s built upon the grave of two separate failed attempts that came before.
I promise that you’re going to get my best effort in these pieces. I don’t promise to be here forever. I don’t promise that you’ll always like what I have to say and that every post will be a viral success.
I promise to give you my best, and my best comes with the baggage and feelings of my current state of mind.
I want you here, and I want to hear from you. I’d love it if you’d share how you’ve learned from failure and especially what it has helped you process in your career.
If you’ve read this far, you should subscribe. I’ll see ya next time.
I’m glad you’re here.
I've taken jobs that were way beyond me. I wasn't really trained or prepared. I wasn't very good, or better said, effective. I look back, however, to see that's the way I learn about how things work. It's painful to keep staring at a train wreck in the rear view mirror. What was more painful for me was the realization that the amount of attention that I gave to the aftermath would have been better spent on preparing realistically, reflecting sooner and asking for help. Read the instructions perhaps. Not my strong suit but I'm still learning and that's hard.