Elaine Chang (10) | Staff Reporter
Anticipation like nothing else runs prickles along your body, your pulse battering against your skin, trying to escape its confines.
We’re so close.
The dog-eared, monochromatic scoreboard wails for your attention, trying to distract you from the final point of the final match of your high school career.
23-24.
Each digit sears into your brain and unrelentingly floods your body with urgency.
Losing now would be like unclipping a carabiner and free-falling from the peak of a cliff. An immovable weight hinged on a singular point.
Hasn’t it all been for this?
Six years of hard work: blood beading at your cracked and calloused hands from practicing in a shoddy school parking lot with your father in the dead of a winter night, sweat dripping into your eyes until it mingled with the salty liquid of your bitter tears of effort.
The opposing team’s best attacker is poised like a bird ready to take flight, body flexed like the string of an archer’s bow. Urgency calls for habit, and the setter sends the ball in a flawless arc towards the attacker.
You force your feet to shift off the ground, willing movement into them. It’s up to you to thwart the ball’s pathway to the ground.
The sound of the attacker’s hand hitting the ball is sharp and it wills your feet into action.
A trickle of sweat curls down the side of your face as you move towards the ball, and you faintly register the fatigue latching onto your joints.
The yellow and navy ball spins towards your arms in a kaleidoscope of color and energy. You relax your arms to absorb the impact of the hit. For a second, time seems to laze and slow down as you relish the burning contact of synthetic leather against your skin.
To your horror, the ball shanks off your arms and flies to the side of the court. Feebly, you register the arbitrary effort of your teammate, who is much too far away, diving after the ball.
Cinematically, it bounces once, twice, and then rolls to a stop.
Tweet!
The referee’s whistle pierces through your thin veil of denial that you had just lost the last match of your volleyball career.
Maybe, if the lights hadn’t been concentrated in the exact spot I had been looking to watch for the spike, I would’ve gotten the ball up. Maybe, if I had been there a split second earlier, I could’ve gotten the ball up.
The last point of the match plays through your head, each time with you changing one little thing about your movements.
Robotically, you gather at the net for congratulatory statements, and when the opponents’ best attacker takes your hand warmly and smiles in congratulations, you feel a twinge of bitter jealousy.
Later, the smell of Salonpas and fresh court cleaner will fill your nostrils as your teammates busily get changed.
The slight sting on your arms will remind you of the the loss you just experienced, and, in hindsight, you will think that it seems so far in the past now.
The team is going out for sundaes, after all.
