The entire gymnasium was silent. Every single person in the gym was standing
at this moment, with his or her eyes fixated on the small, skinny girl, whose
figure duplicated that of the microphone she was holding. Hearing her voice
reminded me the birds that chirped and sang ever so delightfully to awaken me
each and every morning. As I stood on the end line with my team, my eyes scanned
the horizon. Seeing the bleachers filled to capacity made me realize how lucky I
really was. I had tingles going through my body, like it was Christmas morning
or something, as everyone anxiously awaited the game to begin. This is what high
school dreams are made of. As the crowd sat silently, the players slowly huddled
around. This is the moment that the team had dreaded all season long, and it has
happened only two plays into the match. An aerial view would show the circle of
players gathered around a fallen man, number nine. This would be a long match if
this superstar did not return to the game, he had worked himself into becoming
the heart and soul of this team, in that he was main driving force of
inspiration each match. Just by watching him you could see that everyday he was
giving 110% and nothing less. He was a prime example of someone who loves the
game they play. As he lay there screaming in pain and grabbing his ankle as if
he had a healing touch, nobody knew what to do but stand there and watch. The
entire arena was completely silent, even the opposing teams fans didn’t know
what to do.
The kid that everyone called miller- time, who was wearing a cut volleyball
on his head and had his extremely large gut painted red and white, the teams
school colors, paused in midst of his wild behavior. See this was an unfortunate
tragedy that you think only happens in movies. But the reality of the matter was
that this was real, maybe even a little too real. It seemed as though time had
stopped as if a higher being took the remote control and hit the pause button so
they could get another beer and go relieve themselves in the bathroom. At this
time everyone was watching carefully, as if there lottery numbers were being
read and they were only one number away from the jackpot, to the simple tests
that the trainer on duty was performing on the fallen comrade. But each movement
only brought about more pain. See let me explain why this was such a bad thing
that number nine had gone down to an ankle injury. This was the 1999 State
Volleyball Championship. The match had only just begun. In volleyball there are
matches, each match consists of a set of games. Each game is up to fifteen
points. The first team to win the best out of five games is the winner. Number
nine who was only a junior had in fact become the most dominant player in the
state as a junior on a team, whose roster was completely dominated by older,
bigger senior. The team also has a very impressive history for winning; they had
won the championship the last two years, and had won it eight times in the last
eleven years. Also the team had gone undefeated for the past two seasons prior
to this one. But this season was already different, in that the team had already
lost a game this season.
But what makes the story even more unbelievable is that the team who had
beaten them in the season, Minnachaug Regional High School of western
Massachusetts, was the team who they were playing in this state championship
match. But during the regular season match, number nine didn’t even get off the
bench, he hadn’t developed or proved himself as a capable player yet, so the
coach went with one of the senior members who had done their sitting the prior
season during that state championship run. The crowd began to clap politely as
his coach and a fellow teammate carried off number nine. You could tell he was
in excruciating pain by the look on his face and the tears coming down his eyes.
This was another first time experience for him and everyone who knew because
they had never seen this young man cry. However the game had to go on. A slight
murmur came over the crowd once the player had been escorted off the
court.Everyone was asking what was going to happen, and the late arrivers were
trying to be caught up on exactly what had happened. As number nine was sitting
on the sideline performing some mobility and flexibility tests, his mind began
to wander. At first all he could think about is why me, because for the first
time he was that “somebody else”. He was asking himself questions that had no
answers, such as “why did this happen now?” and will I be able to continue to
play?”
