Another Post About One of My Kids. So Sue me.
My younger daughter, who is in seventh grade, is playing middle school volleyball this year. She is quite an athlete. She's a truly gifted swimmer, and has been playing soccer since she was four years old. But this is the first year she has played volleyball, and frankly I didn't know what to expect. I played volleyball in high school; I always enjoyed it. When my daughter started working with the team, she and I spent some time working on technique. But until this afternoon, I hadn't seen her play in a match.
She was awesome. She serves overhand, with a little run-up and jump. And her serves are powerful! She digs out hard shots from the other side like a pro, and she even had a couple of really nice spikes. It's not that I didn't think she had the potential to be good at volleyball. The truth is, she's good at just about every sport she tries. (When she was in fourth grade, she won her school's Punt, Pass, and Kick competition and then took second place in the second round that covered this section of our state. All this despite the fact that at the time she won the local competition, we didn't even own a football.)
What gets me though, is that I didn't know she could do the things I saw her do this afternoon. I had no idea. She blew me away. Her team lost a very, very tight match, and she was there at the end, a leader on the team, consoling the girl who let up the final point -- that might have been the most impressive thing I saw her do, actually.
She's the younger of my two kids, and in some ways I still think of her as younger than she is. That's a mistake that will be much harder to make after what I saw today.
This evening I'm a proud papa. Actually, I am most evenings...