Volleyball has probably been the longest and most enduring of my life’s many loves.

I started playing in high school because the sports teacher had a soft spot for me and put me on the team. I wasn’t very good but the rest of my team was, so I got to go to many different schools and play with all kinds of people and experience many game wins and competition wins, including zonal championships. It was the most exhilarating thing I’d experienced in my life up to that point, and was arguably the most meaningful.

If I had my way, I would have showed up to every single training session and never missed a game or an opportunity to practice. But life got in the way (for my parents) and I had to stop playing when I was about 16 years old.

For nearly 20 years after that happened, I harboured some resentment in my heart about being made to stop playing when all I had wanted to do was continue to play. I never let go of my “what if”s and “if only”s.

Then one day the thought occurred to me, “what if I just started to play again now?” (In hindsight, it is absolutely insane to me that this thought did not occur to me for nearly TWENTY YEARS of sadness about not having volleyball in my life anymore!)

I got online and did a google search and found a local social competition and signed up. I got placed on a team with 5 others who were also individuals looking for a team. I began to play every Tuesday night. Four and a half years later, Tuesday night is still volleyball night, consistently the best night of my week. 2 of the original other 5 are still my teammates on my current team, and we’ve been to each other’s weddings, as well as shared in other major life experiences (birthdays, house sits, camping, board games, pet care, all kinds of adventures). For a couple of years, I even worked for the organization that runs this Tuesday night competition.

Tonight we were in prelim rounds for a new season and played against a pretty evenly matched team. We played 3 sets. We won the first one, they won the second one, and the third was a tie: 26-26 when the bell rang/time ran out. I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a 26-26 tied game before. It was so incredibly fun.

I’m still not very good, but the rest of my team is. And just like my high school volleyball team, everyone is super nice to each other and I never feel out of place or like I don’t belong, no matter how many shots I miss or imperfect plays I’m involved in or points I cost the team. The points I help win are always celebrated, and everything else is met with looks and words of encouragement.

I’m so glad it randomly occurred to me to try letting go of my resentment and just doing something about it instead, because “what if” I had just stayed resentful all my life and missed out on all the years of volleyball I still have left in me?!

I feel like the volleyball version of Ted Lasso’s Dani Rojas.

“Volleyball is life!”