National Indoors

Okay, so that was the most disastrous trip I've taken in a long time!

I love going to tournaments because I love the way I play at tournaments. Most times, its like I am a different person. No one knows me, but everyone respects my game. There are people like me at the tournament; people who can play hard, who can hate me on the court, and who can leave it all on the court.

I love that.

I feel uninhibited. I can hit at someone and no one cries or yells or complains. (Sometimes, they duck and run and shriek like they are the star of a horror flick.) But no one berates me for playing the game like I do.

I always come back from tournaments, despite the outcome, feeling renewed and energized. But this trip went so badly, that I honestly felt lost when I came back. And I didn't play well. I was confident that I could win, but it wasn't the same.

I had put a lot of work into this tournament. I worked so hard on the court and in the gym. I spent so much time on the ball machine and doing squats and lunges. I served so many baskets of balls. I hit before school and after. I was at every match play.

Nationals were in Chicago, a short drive away. Awesome, considering how much I would have to travel to do any other tournament. The tournament was indoors and I struggle so much with my asthma and allergies in the spring. It seemed that everything was set for me to succeed. And then it began to fall apart...

My mom couldn't drive with me.

My grandma got sick and my mom had to go anyway.

I leave my house for the five hour drive, knowing that I would have only an hour to spare and an hour into my trip, my boyfriend calls to tell me that I left my suitcase at home.

I get to the match, somehow, with 15 minutes to spare.

There's only a five minute warm up instead of the ten I was expecting.

Frazzled.

Trying to relax.

Can't keep balls in play.

Match over.

I drove my mom the two hours to her hometown so we could visit my grandma while she was in the hospital. Then I drove the two hours back to Chicago.

Sometimes, you just resign yourself to the fact that things are going to be the way they are going to be. There was nothing that could have been done differently, so, weirdly, I was not so much disappointed as I was just deflated.

I spent the next week eating cake. (And all the rest of the good stuff that I had deprived myself of in order to train for Nationals). I didn't go to the gym. Unfortunately, I had to hit because league was starting, but my heart wasn't there and my hitting was so unremarkable, that it made me feel worse.

I speak a lot of being goal-oriented. Without a goal in mind, I struggled to practice or hit well. And even though I don't have a goal in mind now, I have no tournament marked on my calendar in pen, somehow lately, I've found the energy to train again. I am training without aim, which is new for me, but right now, it just feels right. I am not a person who lives by my horoscope, but I happened to catch my horoscope in the paper the Sunday after I returned home and it said... "Placing too much importance on short term goals is dangerous."

Maybe that's what I did. And maybe that's why I am beginning to move on, because the long term was always to be a better player and to win a national tournament. Getting fixated on which National tournament was dangerous.

I know it will come.

Stay tuned.
KS