Bouncing Balls and Devastating Defeats

Keito Watanabe

Suffering in anguish and humiliation, Noah Graves (12), Joseph Hsu (12), Daniel Munson (12), Keito Watanabe (12), Daniel Kim (11), Shion Fraser (11), and Teddy Zimmer (11) sat on the grass outside the Dalat gymnasium as they muttered quietly or simply stared into space. The boys’ varsity volleyball team faced a crushing defeat by Chung Ling, the second best team in the tournament.

It was the second day of the 4^th Annual Spike & Strike Tournament, an event hosted by Dalat that consists of a volleyball and soccer tournament during two consecutive weekends. Despite it being a Saturday, hundreds of Dalat supporters came to watch and cheer the Dalat Eagles playing it out on the court. The volleyball team had won both games on Friday and had placed first on their group standings. Even with the loss of the captain Andrew Kim (12), and hitters Sam Huang (12) and Anson Chin (12), they were pumped up to defeat the other teams to win the tournament.

They, however, were not expecting what was about to happen next.

The team gathered around the sidelines as the head coach, Craig Roylance, gave some final advice. After a short prayer, Graves (12) shouted “Dalat!” as the fellow teammates responded by shouting back “Lah Wan!” which, when translated into Bahasa, meant, “to fight.” As the team finished off their chant with a loud “HA,” the starting members headed off to the court. The fateful match had finally begun.

As the match went on, disorders happened within the team. With the brand new line-up, consisting of new players and positions, the team was confused with each play that they dictated. Frustrated and stressed, the players started to blame both themselves and others for each mistake that the team made. The team was in complete disarray; and, as a result, they not only lost the match by a devastating 0-2, but also lost their ticket to the finals. Hsu (12) reflected on the terrible sets that his team just played: “Due to the new regulations and loss of starters from SAT, we had to change our playing style to one we’ve never practiced. These factors affected us mentally, and therefore we were not able to play our best”.

In the end, however, they placed 3^rd in the tournament, winning medals for each player on the team. Huang (12) expressed his feelings for this tournament, “It was an exciting learning experience as we not only had fun playing volleyball but also noticed our areas of improvements to prepare ourselves to take the championship trophy home in the upcoming ASCS tournament.”

The volleyball teams fought hard, cried hard, and won hard during this tournament, and they are now all getting ready to conquer their final tournament of their season: the ASCS tournament.