Fall-ing for volleyball

Well, there you have it.

After the final team and athlete were eliminated this weekend (A-L's football Knights and Sullivan's cross country runner Caitlyn Cordell) The Fall sports season in Moultrie County is complete.
It goes fast, and it's both fun and hard to watch. When I met with coaches and players this preseason, each and every last one of them had a reflection in their eyes. What were they looking at? A championship.

But, alas, each and every one of them have ended up looking elsewhere. Although it may be interesting to watch teams and their coaches from the television or sideline, it's even more interesting from the sports reporter's perspective. When the season begins, they are happy to give quotes and send back e-mails and send over stats and answer questions, but that excitement shrinks with each loss, and by season's end the sports reporter will be excited if that same coach would even look in their direction when their name is called, even if it is a distant, glazed-over stare.

But, that's that. Now each coach can contemplate what went wrong (and right!) and what they will do about it next year (if there is a next year!).

And the sports reporter and the fans just move on to the next sport, basketball.

I enjoyed football and its grandiose showing. It's the most complicated and hands-on high school sport there is and it gets the fans more riled up than any baseball game I went to (and they have great nachos!), but it wasn't my favorite sport this fall.

That's right, I'll admit it, it was volleyball.

I won't lie, my exposure to volleyball prior to this season had been slim, and I had no idea what I had been missing! I had blogged a bit about this earlier in the season, but, oh man! The cheers from the players! I wish the baseball team had tried a few of those, it would have made the games a LOT more exciting! And maybe if they pumped on some pre-game warmup jams and slid up the baselines two at a time, then hopped up and down from first, second to third.

Seriously, the pre-game warmup was my favorite part of each match.

And that's not saying I didn't enjoy the matches at all. These girls, on every team, were fierce competitors. And I thought I was pretty decent at volleyball until I started watching any of these teams, I would be dead if I tried to play any of these girls.

I also really enjoyed the scoring system, as even if the team I was covering went down 14-1 to start, a few points in their favor and I would think, here we go, they're on the comeback trail! It never was the case, but every single time I thought it would be the first time.