It has been 4 weeks since the training started after the DP orientation trip.

After I missed a couple of trainings due to the knee pain I got from the trip, I attended to all the trainings.

We played games of either 3 or 4 sets against other schools and teams every Friday, and I played in a few sets mostly as a part of the B team and sometimes as a rotational front court player subbing on and off with the libero.

I improved a little bit in terms of vertical jumping, and I made a few hits(spikes) from the tip of the net. This means that I somehow figured out a way to hit the ball when I can barely reach for the ball when I’m looking at it and jumping at the same time. My bumping also improved by quite a lot as I learned out to flatten out my fore arms when bumping, and my tossing also improved a lot because our coach called up players from the B team and gave us practice drills.

During games against the other schools, at first it seemed so simple as our starting players were getting points very easily, but as soon as I went on court, everything was a chaos. I went completely blank, and I was confused with positions because I never played in a 4 2 positioning with 2 setters, and I didn’t know to which one my receives were supposed to go to.

I figured it out mid game during the time out so positions were sorted, but the next problem was how scared I was when the ball came to me. Everytime the opposing team was serving, or when it was their attack, I was thinking ‘Please don’t come to me, please go somewhere else’ although I knew that is not a proper mindset for a player to have during the game. I think I was even more shaky because I wanted to get in the team and I didn’t want to make mistakes for the coach to mark me down. Also because I didn’t want to make mistakes among the starters, but I don’t know why that got to me so badly.

When I was playing with the B team, I felt a lot more comfortable, probably because the opponent team sent out their younger players and also because I had to comfort the other young players in the B team since I was the oldest. It felt really great when the B team won our first set, and I don’t think I’ll forget that feeling in a while.

Then the next day after the game during warm up when the coach announced the team by going to each player. I was already expecting myself to not make the team, but I definitely had some hope because I had some fine moments. The coach walked up to me, and talked about how I improved considering the fact that I missed the last season as a whole because of ankle injury, and how my hitting techniques were getting better. They were nice words, but the result wasn’t great, she told me that there are already a lot of players so she couldn’t take me. So I just smiled, and said thank you, because I was somewhat expecting it, and I didn’t want to seem so disappointed, but I was, really because I thought I had the slightest chance of making the team.