Life Lesson #9 - Volleyball

It was also during these years at Avco/Moffat which would later become Vulcan Hart Canada that I found a love for volleyball.

My softball team thought it would be a great idea to find one of the high school gyms that was available and work out there one day a week to keep in shape during the off season. Well the number of guys showing up were never that great and one night I was the only guy that showed up. My brother, ironically, had the gym next door where he was coaching a local women's club volleyball team. Steve was an accomplished volleyball player at high school and with club ball and had a pretty good knack for coaching as I later learned. I observed them that first night and for a few weeks thereafter as my softball cronies never really caught the gym bug until I learned enough about the game and my brother asked if I wanted to share coaching duties with him.

It was not long before I became obsessed with volleyball and I did everything I could to learn everything I could about the game. I went to several volleyball camps, went through certification and was lucky enough to win a couple of provincial championships coaching college and club teams. There were so many lessons I learned during those years coaching volleyball that I struggle to narrow it down to one or two lessons but as with all things, there were lessons learned during our winning years and lessons learned during our losing years.

I remember one year in particular when I was lucky enough to have been selected to coach the elite regional team for the Provincial Summer Games. We had a really good group of boys, most of them who played club so they were used to playing at an elite level but we also had a few guys who we selected to the team for development purposes (remember my grade 9 basketball experience?). Well we soared through the round robin and preliminary playoffs pretty well, mostly by playing the "starting six". Some of the players never got the chance to play because it was important that we get to the finals for too many reasons to mention here. When we got to the finals, my brother Steve and I made the decision that we would make sure every single player on the team got the chance to play in that final. We did get the chance to play every player and we were lucky enough to come out on top and win the gold medal. What came afterward however was far more rewarding. Those players who would normally not have played and would have warmed the bench came to us and thanked us for allowing them to play but more importantly, they celebrated because they were an actual part of the win. One member of the audience watching the match who happened to coach a couple of the players in club came up to me after and congratulated me and thanked me for getting every player into the final match. He had noticed and thought is was a big deal.

I contrast that to a year before when we had the most successful year in coaching our college team by winning the provincial championships and playing at the nationals. Quebec was the class of the country in college volleyball and the real battle was for the silver medal. We found ourselves playing in the semifinals against a tough team from Alberta. The match went on for 3 hours and we found ourselves down 13-2 in the fifth and deciding game. We fought back to actually take the lead 14-13 with game and match point but ultimately lost the match 16-14. It was a heartbreaking loss and after that marathon match we only had 10 minutes to get ready for the bronze match against Manitoba and we just didn't have anything left so lost to them in a close match.

Heartbroken, I did my best to console the girls and say how proud of them I was that we got that far, that close to playing for the gold and that only exhaustion robbed us of the bronze medal.

Later that evening, one of the players who was a substitute came up to me and said "coach, you realize that you never played me the whole tournament". I was at a loss for words. I did not know what to say. I was so wrapped up in the pressure of winning that I only played the best players the whole tournament and didn't allow the other girls on the team to have the once in a lifetime experience of playing at the nationals.

Life Lesson #9 Make sure you know what is important. In life, how important was it to win at the expense of robbing those deserving girls of a once in a lifetime experience?