Volleyball panic

The other night I went to an advanced volleyball clinic.

Me + Volleyball = NOT ADVANCED.

But, the only way to get better at something is to attempt to play above your comfort level, right?

Um, right.

In the past, when I have taken these clinics (in an attempt to get better so that when I play with The Hubs' team I do not put myself at risk of being killed by my teammates for being so incredibly bad), the instructors have started by getting us to sit in a circle, say our names, how much volleyball we play, what we want to learn, etc, etc. It was all very easy and fun, if not exactly very volleyball-skill related. Then, we'd do some stretching, running around the gym... a good hour would pass before we even really played volleyball. Which is great when you suck at volleyball as much as I do.

But at this clinic, I knew I was in trouble when, promptly at the start of the clinic, the instructor said he didn't care what our names are, how much we paid for the clinic, if we're late, or anything else that didn't have to do with the actual volleyball. Um, okay.

Then, we began these crazy drills, where he referenced plays and setups and used a bunch of terms I did not at all understand. And everytime someone did something wrong, he stopped us to announce it. Guess how often we had to stop playing to find out who did something wrong? And guess who it was ALWAYS about?

In the equivalent of What Not To Wear, I was What Not to Do. It's really too bad I didn't get a free wardrobe out of it.

In my own defence (aka enter whining, feel-sorry-for-me session here), I have only known anything about volleyball for four years (ack, already four years? I'm not sure how much longer I can use this excuse, but for now...). Before that, I had no idea how many times you could hit a volleyball, how you could hit it, how many people play volleyball or how long a game lasts. I didn't know what a "pass" was, a "set" was, a "free ball" was. Actually, just last week, after hearing people call "Side out!" throughout every game for the past four years, I finally got up the nerve to ask The Hubs what on earth that meant. Mostly, when I heard people saying things I didn't understand, I just tuned it out, you know, by thinking about the latest episode of The Hills, for example.

I am blaming my lack of knowledge entirely on Mrs. Millar, my seventh grade teacher, who also taught us phys. ed. Mrs. Millar was also my mother's first grade teacher, if that gives you any idea how old she was. But clearly, she considered herself the Misty May of the plus-60 set. For the entire year, she refused to remember that my name was Chantel. Instead, she called me Maureen, my mom's name. When it came time for the volleyball week of phys. ed class, she saw me touch the ball once and promptly told me that I was terrible at it, and that I should not play. And so I never did again.

Anyway, I somehow managed to survive the first clinic. Only three more to go. After which point, I'm hoping to look like this:

Hmm... I wonder how Misty gets her nail polish to stay on when she's always in the sand...

I'll keep you posted on my progress.