How hard could it be?
As it turns out, that’s a dangerous question to pose in more ways than one — something I realized after a rolled ankle and a concussion.
Back in 2024, I wanted to get more active again. In an email from my local parks and recreation center, I saw a signup sheet for sand volleyball.
“OK,” I said to myself. “Let’s do it.”
There was just one glaring problem here: I hadn’t played volleyball since fifth-grade gym class. When I was growing up in rural Coffee County in the ’90s and early Aughts, volleyball wasn’t quite the powerhouse sport it is for young women today. I now see my friends’ children playing volleyball with a vengeance, traveling throughout the country year-round with club teams and competing on the high school level.
I didn’t have those kinds of opportunities.
There wasn’t a league available, much less a team. It wasn’t until 2008 that my high school decided to start a program. Clocking in at a whopping 5-foot-nothing at the time, I didn’t think I had what it takes.
Flash-forward 16 years. As it turns out, participating in a sport I’d never played seriously — for the first time, at age 30 — was a bit more challenging than I’d expected. On a rainy morning, I found myself at Dick’s Sporting Goods, hunting for a volleyball I could use for practice with my makeshift team. Turns out my teammates hadn’t played volleyball in years. I wasn’t necessarily optimistic about our chances.
We set out on the wet sand for our first match. I tossed the volleyball up to serve. My shoulder soon reminded me of my age — despite me thinking I have great upper-body strength from playing fastpitch softball. I served. The ball hit the sand with a sad thud. I didn’t even make it to the net.
It would have been easy to quit right there — deem this a failed experiment. But two years later, I’m glad I stuck with it. I have learned to love volleyball, and have improved a great deal since that first serve. I now play both indoor volleyball and sand volleyball. It’s a reprieve from the ever-buzzing phone and list of daily responsibilities. A way to reset.
One day a week, for just one hour on the court, I get the chance to feel like a kid again. I jump, I run, I sprint, I slide — not always gracefully, admittedly — all over the hardwood. And along the way I sustained the aforementioned injuries. But I recovered, and I pressed on.
So to answer that question I asked myself a couple of years ago, it’s much more difficult than I thought. But I’ve found a sense of self in trying something new in my 30s, and regaining my footing as an athlete. And that alone has proven more worthwhile than I ever could have calculated.
A four-part look at recreational leagues and high-level clubs
