Precision, hardness, and a hell of a lot of misses

VN-sport test goes on.
After hockey with Värnamo GIK, handball with Anderstorps SK was now time for Gislaved VK and volleyball.
And I got to know that I was alive.

I will start well this text as I did before.

I have experience in this sport too.

Hockey, I had been playing at a young age and handball I had predisposition, but neither of them was my cup of tea.

Could volleyball, a sport I played a lot in my years in school, be something?

Well, not that either.

It turned out that when I got the challenge from Gislaved VK's elite teams, they just wanted to mess with me.

And I really fell for it.

I came to the hall at 6pm, half an hour before the start, and were immediately told that we would run an exercise called the ladder, this is the team's suggestion. The team wanted to run it.

It was pure hell, if I may be so crude. Footwork and coordination has never been my strong suit, and it showed. The girls on the team smiled significantly and I tried hard but embarrassed myself quite dramatically.

Lisa Tannerfalk took me under her wing. I became her protégé. She tried to show me how to turn. A spike from her side became more of a serve from my side.

But then there were the warmups.

Serve game I thought was perfect during practice for. In any case, after I had been testing five or six times after smashing the first in the net.

"You can let the toss drop, if you want," said coach Daniel Magnusson.

I ignored the suggestion. I would get the ball. And eventually, I got there in the end.

But having watched the video afterward, my serves were not at all perfect. Balloon Serves was the right word but the team cheered for every ball I got over. If they were kind, or cheered sarcastically should be left unsaid, but I want to believe that it was the former.

But most of the work I had to do was serve receiving, and I can say that it was not my thing.

When you stand at the sideline thinking that they do not serve so hard. It's easy to expect, but when the well-trained serves flew past me, I changed my tune rather quickly.

But it is often not all about the power, I noticed. It's all about precision. To see where the opponent is on the court and put the ball where they are not. For I do not know how many times I thought I was in a good place to receive a spike but I just did not have my hands together.

But then it was not just accuracy. When Hannah Salomäki arrived and took in her spot on the floor, I stood paralyzed. I had really only a little bit of luck that Dutch spiker Ester de Vries was not at practice. Then I would not have been able to write this piece.

But is volleyball easy? Well, maybe in school. Maybe where you are the most athletic in a class with people who are fairly indifferent. But against the elite teams? Forget it. You have no chance.

Or as coach Daniel Magnusson said:

"You're lucky this is not a men's team."

Well, thanks.