One Year at a Time - Professional Volleyball

My experiences of finding a contract were always rife with uncertainty. For 9 professional seasons the earliest I signed a full-year contract was mid-July, and the latest was in the 2nd half of October. Canadian National Team carding was barely sufficient to cover basic living expenses, and if you had a significant other you were hoping that they would find ways to earn some extra money. World League occasionally entailed a nice bonus at the end of the summer if we did well. 

 My experience will differ from some of the bigger names in the sport of volleyball, because if you started your team with me as the centerpiece, you were 1) doing it wrong, and 2) not going to have a very offensive team. I was far superior at stopping points as opposed to scoring them, which made me an effective complementary piece during my best years. That meant I was waiting until the guys who were charged with putting points on the board were signed before I was taken care of.

March/April/May

The season would finish up during any of these months, depending on how well my team did. Following our final match, there would be a couple of days of either celebrations for a championship or tasks such as sending money home and closing my bank account, dealing with any issues pertaining to my apartment, and a host of smaller tasks which needed to be completed before saying goodbye to the club. Negotiations for next year are completed for some; for me if I'm lucky they're just beginning.

May-August/September

National team competitions. The search for a team continues. The longer the summer goes, the harder it is to keep the thought of being unemployed out of my mind. 

September/October

I find a contract and I’m on my way very quickly after signing the contract, and organizing my flights. I was always sure to include a flight for my now-wife as coming home to an apartment in a foreign country that wasn’t empty was a game-changer for me.

 I hop off my flight and I’m met by someone at the airport who takes me to my temporary accommodations. Things are never ready on-time in the professional volleyball world. Even though I indicated that I actually touch ground before being picked up, the process of me integrating into my new team might be similar to being parachuted into new and unfamiliar territory to meet up with your group. I needed to hit the ground running and earn the trust of those around me - quickly - while beginning to deliver the services that the team bought when they signed me to a contract.

October-March/April/May

Volleyball... Lots of Volleyball. 

Our Reality

I only ever signed one-year contracts, which meant I was continuously having to perform under the pressure of the “what have you done for me lately” in a pay-for performance type of environment. This was hard – my wife and I always felt like we made these great relationships but knew that the majority of them would end by the time May came around. There have been a few former teammates I keep in touch with; I had one come to our wedding in 2014, and visited another in Finland last Christmas. Unfortunately the list isn't as long as it should be. What will never be lost on us is the impact everyone we've met along the way has had on us.

My wife and I were reflecting on this process the other day. Each year was a new challenge; adjusting to life in Turkey is very different compared to adjusting to life in France or Slovenia. We talked about the growth we both experienced, personally and as a couple, by having to adjust to a new way of doing things. There was no “well this is how we always do it back home, so this is how I’ll do it here” but instead the excitement of trying something new and seeing how it fits into our life. A great memory of us figuring it out in a new country: my wife summoned the courage to contact the World Health Organization in Lyon to ask for an internship, where she spent four months working during the peak of the Ebola crisis in 2015. Later that season while practicing her French, she tried to order almond croissants in France - who knew that Allemand (German) and amande (almond) could not be used interchangeably in a bakery!

For me, it was figuring out how to communicate and work with guys from 4-8 countries and be able to stick together when the atmosphere turned hostile. It was learning how coaches from different cultures worked, what their expectations of me were, and learning whether to pack my patience or my Italian curse words for practice that day.

As I was nearing retirement from the game and we needed to figure out what to do, there was a sense of confidence, knowing that we had already been thrown a number of curve balls and at worst, managed to foul them off.

Part of me enjoys the ability to now set down some roots, make meaningful connections to the people and the community you live in and have those people stay in your life.  There’s still a part of both my wife and I, which is a little voice inside each of us growing stronger as time passes, saying “bring on a new challenge – things are getting too comfortable.”

Adam