Fearing the Sideout

A buddy of mine recently tried to set me up with a friend, I’ll call her Melissa, a fellow divorcee with kids and limited time. I agreed because I hadn’t been on a date since before Tinder, before LeBron moved to the Heat, even before the iPhone 3GS. I’d scrolled through enough fake profiles and exchanged my share of messages with bots to realize dating apps are like the 1:30 a.m. urinal conversations I have with myself after too many drinks. Meeting someone through a mutual contact reminded me that with a ball in my hands, I could make that ball dance.

My friend said Melissa played volleyball in college. I played a college sport, too, soccer, so I envisioned sharing stories of thrilling wins, road trips, and misadventures. Maybe we’d play pepper someday, and she’d be impressed after spiking the ball into my body and watching me dig it up with ease.

My volleyball career lasted three years in high school, mainly as a back row specialist, the position for the vertically challenged. I had an ok jump serve, but my floater was nasty. After years of perfecting soccer shooting techniques—inside, outside of the foot, knucklers, benders, dippers, chips, volleys—thousands of hours of ball striking translated into volleyball serves. Most players could handle a jump serve by taking the sting out of the ball. A floater just needed to be pushed up. My floater bounced off the side of a passer’s arm, dropped on his toes, or rose into his neck. I never knew where it would end up, but I kept it in play.

My senior year of high school, I tore my meniscus five games into the soccer season, an injury that set me back months, years even. The first month I cried. The second month I sulked at the sight of my hip-to-ankle plaster cast. The next five months, I rehabbed every day, gradually building the belief that my soccer career would resume. When volleyball season arrived, the coaches stopped me in the hallway outside the gym. I’d just been cleared to run and came from a track workout where I tried to keep pace with the distance runners as they ran laps around the upstairs hallways. I nearly puked while the track kids recovered as if they’d walked from Biology to Pre-Calc.

The coaches asked if I had any intention of playing. I’d be fully cleared in a month and would miss the first few games. I was dying to compete, to be around teammates, so I asked for patience. I’d be one of four returning seniors in addition to three starting juniors, one of whom was a future All-State outside hitter. They didn’t need me for offense. They needed serves, passes, experience, athleticism, and confidence. I had hyper-focused motivation without any pressure to perform. They saved me a spot.

My second or third game came against the team we’d beaten in the district final the previous year, in their old gym with rickety bleachers up against the court so their fans could yell filthy insults without administrative intervention. My floaters lacked action, my passes missed the setter, and my movement felt restricted by the clunky knee brace that prevented hyperextension and left black streaks on the floor whenever I dove.

The first game went long, so Coach kept me in to save substitutions. I switched to the weak side so our new All-State hitter could be on the power side, but that meant I had to block. Prior to my injury, I could reach rim on a ten-foot hoop and had developed an adequate soft-block. I’d trained hard since my pale cast-ridden leg was the shape of a Fungo bat.

When I jumped to block, my fingertips barely reached above the net. Their outside hitter smashed the ball down into my teammate behind me on the three-foot line. Their fans went crazy and started an in-your-face chant. We gave up three straight points, all on my side. Coach called a timeout, then subbed me out. We lost that game, eventually the match. The rest of the season, I only played the front row during blowouts.

I never talked to Melissa that night. She spent hours in the kitchen with the wives while I lounged in the living room with the husbands, watching UNC rout Villanova in the Final Four. At one point, while talking to myself in the bathroom mirror, I gained the courage to make a move, then didn’t. When she left, she barely said goodbye, offered a “see ya.” I sent her a text the next day, asking if she’d like to meet up. She ghosted me. Later, my friend asked me what happened. I had no answer, but it didn’t take long for the writer and athlete in me to analyze the situation.

It’s been over twenty-five years since I last played volleyball, so I had to remind myself the next few serves could end up in the net. The difficult part of being a 44-year-old single parent is finding the person I was when I was last out there. He had defined goals, limitless energy, and unshakeable confidence. Bad serves were cast aside because the ball came back the next rotation.

I’ve forgotten the feeling of clutching the ball in my hands at the service line, studying the gaps in the opponents’ positioning. Do I go for the jump serve and toss the ball out over the line, leaping forward to take the ball off the base of my fingers, watch it dip over the net and collapse to the floor beyond outstretched hands? Or do I make solid contact with an open palm then watch their eyes bulge as the ball defies physics, swerving at the last second before it bounces off a random body part?

Maybe I’m guarded. Maybe I’m afraid. Maybe that projects as disinterest or insecurity. Maybe Coach never put me in. Maybe the referee never handed me the ball.

At my age, who doesn’t have bad serves? Aren’t those signs of a lived life? I’d be remiss not to question my serving ability after the last one went into the net. But my inaction left me wondering if I even want the ball in my hands, whether I believe I can still make that ball dance.

Greg Oldfield is a physical education teacher and coach from the Philadelphia area. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse, Carve, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and the Under Review, among others. Oldfield’s column “Outside the Huddle” appeared in Daily Drunk during the 2020 fantasy football season. He also writes about soccer for Brotherly Game/Philadelphia Soccer Now as well as the Florida Cup.