Ugh!
Between Saturday and Wednesday, I spent:
~6 hours on horseback
~4 hours on a motocycle
~3 hours playing volleyball
My knees have gone beyond crying mercy and are now on strike. By the last game of volleyball, I could no longer go into a crouch when I was setting from the front row ... I just couldn't stand up fast enough if the pass wasn't perfect and with this group, the pass is never perfect. Now, two days later, we're leaving "constant pain" land and have returned to the shores of "stairs are not my friend".
georgejas, I may need your help.
We have a couple REALLY hard servers and hitters that come to our town league every week. They're kids, college students who haven't realized that cranking everything you have into the ball is a good way to destroy your shoulder. Most male players go through this stage ... strength is everything, aim is nice but not required, damn - muscle damage, guess I'll have to learn how to go around the block instead of through it. Most of them grow out of it ... often by blowing out their shoulder and no longer being ABLE to crank the ball but that's another rant.
So we've got hard, somewhat erratic hitters and servers. We also have a couple really horrible passers, people who barely know what a volleyball is, let alone know what to do with it.
You see where this is going, right?
I have no problem with hard hitters cranking down on someone who has enough skill to defend their face. Pummling the hell out of someone who can't get their hands up in time and don't have the reflexes to duck.... yeah, boys, you're really impressing me with that one. CMU folk, think the Yip-yips only with a strip of meanness added.
If this was serious league play, I could understand it. If it were listed as "intermediate and above" players in the flyer, I might be more forgiving. This is a very informal pickup group ...all skill levels welcome.
Its not like they don't have skillful people to aim at ... the organizer is very consciencious about spreading us out across the teams. But noooo, we have one or two yahoos who get their rocks off by slamming the newbies and giggling when someone gets tattooed*.
The other night, I had enough.
I'm not a hard hitter. I'll never have the shear arm strength required to be truely frightening. Even if I did, we're playing on men's height net. I'd need another foot, probably two, on my verticle to even begin to get the type of swing those guys can bring to bear. I can't challenge them at their own game.
It's okay, though.
I have other skills.
Rusty, short, and female ... I can still serve well.
Normally I just lollipop 'em over. Its a mixed skill set and its more fun if the ball stays in play, pass, set, hit. Normally, the only time I even remotely stretch myself is if we're down by more than 10 and then I just catch us up again. Unfortunately for them, these boys have only ever seen me lollipopping.
I serve underhand. How scary could I be?
This week, I earned the name "Evil" from my teammates for teaching those youngsters the value of a good aim. You want to run up a half a dozen points against my team by slamming the little asian girl in the face multiple times, okay, fine. I'm going to catch us back up by making you shank** 6 balls in a row and take one to the face yourself.
After playing this game for more than a decade, I can run a mediocre team of six into the ground without ever leaving the back line ...if I'm given the proper motivation***. Especially when there are only two players on the other side who have a snow balls chance of getting a hand on a floater****. At that point, the other players just become obsticals and you boys just aren't that good.
We won that game. My setter sat down up at the net after the 8th point. The organizer, who has seen me really serve and knew what it looked like, asked me if we had a problem and I said it was solved. One of the guys came up to me and said that I'd proven my point.
We'll see if he remembers it next week.
In some ways, I'm a little guilty about the whole deal. Yes, those boys need to either play nice or go find a league more suited to their style but it probably could have been accomplished with words from the organizer. Am I any better those yahoos, really? Probably not. I mean, I was out to embarrass the hell out of them and to mock their skills, just as they were doing to the newbies. I enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed having the excuse to open up and I enjoyed making them run and I enjoyed watch them dive and get up swearing. I'll admit I'm not a nice person. Oh well,
I'll do it again next week if they don't pick better targets for their hitting practice.
___________________________________________
* tattoo - short for Tachikara tattoo. Tachikara makes the official game ball for the US. If you tattoo someone, you've pummeled the ball into them hard enough to leave the logo from the ball indented into their skin.
** shank - send the ball shooting wildly off in some random direction
*** No, I can't do this all the time. I have bad days, I have bad serves. I also have numerous trouphies for highest scoring server. When I'm on, I'm on. Its the one thing in volleyball that I am Good(tm) at.
**** Floater - a type of serve where the ball has no spin as it flies though the air. Any air current will cause the ball to move sidewise, out of the expected line of flight and not give you much visual clue that it is happening. One moment you're under the ball, the next the ball is landing a foot to your right. Its a serving style that is truely evil when used outdoors (lots of wind) and only mostly evil in a gym. It is not easy to do.
~6 hours on horseback
~4 hours on a motocycle
~3 hours playing volleyball
My knees have gone beyond crying mercy and are now on strike. By the last game of volleyball, I could no longer go into a crouch when I was setting from the front row ... I just couldn't stand up fast enough if the pass wasn't perfect and with this group, the pass is never perfect. Now, two days later, we're leaving "constant pain" land and have returned to the shores of "stairs are not my friend".
georgejas, I may need your help.
We have a couple REALLY hard servers and hitters that come to our town league every week. They're kids, college students who haven't realized that cranking everything you have into the ball is a good way to destroy your shoulder. Most male players go through this stage ... strength is everything, aim is nice but not required, damn - muscle damage, guess I'll have to learn how to go around the block instead of through it. Most of them grow out of it ... often by blowing out their shoulder and no longer being ABLE to crank the ball but that's another rant.
So we've got hard, somewhat erratic hitters and servers. We also have a couple really horrible passers, people who barely know what a volleyball is, let alone know what to do with it.
You see where this is going, right?
I have no problem with hard hitters cranking down on someone who has enough skill to defend their face. Pummling the hell out of someone who can't get their hands up in time and don't have the reflexes to duck.... yeah, boys, you're really impressing me with that one. CMU folk, think the Yip-yips only with a strip of meanness added.
If this was serious league play, I could understand it. If it were listed as "intermediate and above" players in the flyer, I might be more forgiving. This is a very informal pickup group ...all skill levels welcome.
Its not like they don't have skillful people to aim at ... the organizer is very consciencious about spreading us out across the teams. But noooo, we have one or two yahoos who get their rocks off by slamming the newbies and giggling when someone gets tattooed*.
The other night, I had enough.
I'm not a hard hitter. I'll never have the shear arm strength required to be truely frightening. Even if I did, we're playing on men's height net. I'd need another foot, probably two, on my verticle to even begin to get the type of swing those guys can bring to bear. I can't challenge them at their own game.
It's okay, though.
I have other skills.
Rusty, short, and female ... I can still serve well.
Normally I just lollipop 'em over. Its a mixed skill set and its more fun if the ball stays in play, pass, set, hit. Normally, the only time I even remotely stretch myself is if we're down by more than 10 and then I just catch us up again. Unfortunately for them, these boys have only ever seen me lollipopping.
I serve underhand. How scary could I be?
This week, I earned the name "Evil" from my teammates for teaching those youngsters the value of a good aim. You want to run up a half a dozen points against my team by slamming the little asian girl in the face multiple times, okay, fine. I'm going to catch us back up by making you shank** 6 balls in a row and take one to the face yourself.
After playing this game for more than a decade, I can run a mediocre team of six into the ground without ever leaving the back line ...if I'm given the proper motivation***. Especially when there are only two players on the other side who have a snow balls chance of getting a hand on a floater****. At that point, the other players just become obsticals and you boys just aren't that good.
We won that game. My setter sat down up at the net after the 8th point. The organizer, who has seen me really serve and knew what it looked like, asked me if we had a problem and I said it was solved. One of the guys came up to me and said that I'd proven my point.
We'll see if he remembers it next week.
In some ways, I'm a little guilty about the whole deal. Yes, those boys need to either play nice or go find a league more suited to their style but it probably could have been accomplished with words from the organizer. Am I any better those yahoos, really? Probably not. I mean, I was out to embarrass the hell out of them and to mock their skills, just as they were doing to the newbies. I enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed having the excuse to open up and I enjoyed making them run and I enjoyed watch them dive and get up swearing. I'll admit I'm not a nice person. Oh well,
I'll do it again next week if they don't pick better targets for their hitting practice.
___________________________________________
* tattoo - short for Tachikara tattoo. Tachikara makes the official game ball for the US. If you tattoo someone, you've pummeled the ball into them hard enough to leave the logo from the ball indented into their skin.
** shank - send the ball shooting wildly off in some random direction
*** No, I can't do this all the time. I have bad days, I have bad serves. I also have numerous trouphies for highest scoring server. When I'm on, I'm on. Its the one thing in volleyball that I am Good(tm) at.
**** Floater - a type of serve where the ball has no spin as it flies though the air. Any air current will cause the ball to move sidewise, out of the expected line of flight and not give you much visual clue that it is happening. One moment you're under the ball, the next the ball is landing a foot to your right. Its a serving style that is truely evil when used outdoors (lots of wind) and only mostly evil in a gym. It is not easy to do.