For love of the game

It’s tough having a relationship with something you know could never love you back. I’ve been in a relationship with such a thing going on nine years now. I’ve given my body, heart and soul into it. I’ve won some fights, but I’ve lost even more. I learn every day from it. I give, and it takes. Years of bloody knees, broken shoulders, elbow scrapes and nose bleeds…mind games, strategy matches, and crying…lots of crying. It’s the kind of relationship where you go all day thinking about it, and then when 5 o’clock rolls around and you’re so tired, hungry and depleted, you still go back for more…every time. It’s getting up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning. It’s the kind where you could have so many blisters on your feet that you can barely stand…but you never walk away. For me, IT is volleyball.

I fell in love with volleyball long ago, but only recently did it break. my. heart. After playing four seasons of college volleyball, I finally called it quits in the later part of my senior season. Hopelessly in love – you can imagine what it took to pry me away from my beloved. Yes, I am embarrassed to say, it was a coach. Call it his fault, call it my fault, call it what you want – God knows a million guesses have been made by others – but in the end he drove me away from it…simply because he loved it more.

After the break up, I completely retreated and for almost two years never picked up a ball. The thought of even touching a volleyball or being near a court just made all the old memories resurface. I was on the rebound. I hated that a coach was the thing that tore us apart. He’d made me the thing I worked 21 years not to be…a quitter.

When you go through a breakup like that, it just takes time for your heart to heal. You never really fully recover. It’s been almost two years volleyball-free for me…that’s two years of heartache…two years too long. I know you’re never supposed to look back after something like that breaks your heart, but I missed it. Recently, I came crawling back. The first thing it told me was, “I told you so. I knew you’d be back…” Still, the trust is shattered. It must be built back up. Enter: the Baltimore Sports and Social Club (BSSC).
The BSSC is basically a league for 20-somethings who want to rally around and play a sport (really non-competitively) and then an hour later go out to the bar and get hammered with your teammates. I wasn’t ready to be exclusive yet, so it was the perfect re-introduction for me back into this often-abusive relationship. I joined a random team with a bunch of strangers. I missed every single serve for about three games in a row: evidence of my avoidance of it for the past two years. We’d play volleyball (really horribly, for the most part) for about 45 minutes, and then we’d all walk over to the bar and play shuffleboard with bottomless cups for about three hours. All-in-all a great time. Not to mention, I made some great friends in the process…
Playing with the BSSC definitely raised my confidence back up. After eight games…I think I’m finally ready to take the relationship to the next step: competitive sixes. I recently entered a REAL volleyball league to play competitively on Sunday nights. Slowly, but surely – building the trust.

I mean, what did I think would happen after college? Volleyball and I would just stay together?? People change, we wanted different things – I get that. But I think there should be something like a Halfway House for competitive collegiate athletes transitioning into the real world after college. It may give players like me a more realistic adaptation of what the future holds for serious relationships.

It’s like they say, I guess: Don’t hate the game, hate the player.

Bridget Marie