The Even Greater Tokyo Region

V-Ball

Lately, I have been busy on three fronts:

1. Finishing my masters thesis and paper
2. Working 3 days a week - totaling about 15-20 hours
3. Playing and practicing volleyball.

I have been largely silent about all three of these aspects, the first two because they are sort of boring. The third, because it's sort of embarrassing.

See, we suck. We have been playing since October, and it took until our eighth game to procure our first win. And let me tell you, it was not pretty. One set, we lost 25-1. In the new system of scoring! You know, even a missed serve for them would be a point for us. It was ridiculous, embarrassing, shocking. At the end of the set, when teams need only one point to win, they often chant "1!, 1!, 1!". In this situation, I wasn't sure if they were chanting for themselves, or making a complete mockery of us. Mind you, the week before, we played so badly that a teammate said "at least it can't get any worse than this"...

But now, with our first win, I can break my vow of silence. Here is the table, as it stands now. Our team is SKC. Notice that we are not last anymore, and this is a huge victory for us.

Now, I joined club SKC at the start of the semester. I had no idea what SKC stood for. A few weeks ago, I heard that a long time ago, it did stand for something, but now it doesn't - kind of like how KFC doesn't stand for Kentucky Fried Chicken anymore. Basically, it is a big volleyball club which has 6 men's teams and 11 women's teams, and it is based at the University Sports Centre. I am in the 4th men's team.

See, I used to play volleyball on school teams every winter from when I was 12 till 17-ish. I wasn't great, but I could play to a reasonable standard. So, in an effort to be more socially active in Holland, I decided to play either basketball or volleyball. The basketball club was full of douchebags, so I decided to play volleyball. When I started playing, I realised that it had been seven years since I last played. For the first time in my life I felt old. And for the first time in my life, I experienced losing like I never thought possible. Until our first win, I was regretting the decision. See, I still think I am a basketball player. I have the shoes, but I mean, philosophically, I am a basketball player. Especially when we are losing so badly at volleyball.

But we are slowly getting better, and while my front-court play could use a lot of improvement, I have my mojo in the backcourt. Observe the brilliance of this pass. I should set it up a little bit. See, this was the first set in our last game, but the opposition was up. In fact, they were on a set-point right here. If I didn't complete this pass, we would have lost the first set, and then maybe the entire game, and my vow of silence would still be going. I didn't. The pass, with only my left hand, was perfect, right on top of the setter's head. Glorious. I feel like we can only go up from here... (I am the guy with the headband and the long hair on the green team.)



But with this, I feel happy to have finally revealed my dirty secret.

My name is Ruben, and I am a volleyball player.