By: Sophie Adgate

I think that the only goals I had coming into high school were good grades, kind friends, stability, and not falling down the stairs in front of a large group of people. It is safe to say that being a part of the volleyball team helped me reach the first three goals.

When I joined the team my freshman year, it automatically created structure in my life.  Playing the sport itself was a lot of fun, but it also took up a large amount of time each day at school.  Once I began to stress about how much time it would take, I learned to manage it, limit it, and color coordinate it with a cute agenda. Aside from this, volleyball not only taught me how to manage my grades and stress; it became a big part of my stress relief routine. It was the perfect balance between fun and discipline, and it pushed me to get good grades without ending up in the corner of my room stress-eating peanut butter.

The volleyball program at Heritage has a JVB, JVA, and Varsity team. On each team, there is a wide variety of personalities, and everyone is bound to make some friends. I found this to be true throughout the years, and I enjoyed the company of nearly everyone. It was really nice to have a group of friends that I knew would be consistently in my life. There were often conflicts between players, but it would be fair to assume that every single player would be there for each other in times of trouble. 

In September of last year, I had a grand mal seizure and was diagnosed with a disorder. When I woke up in the hospital, I had messages from all of my teammates, making sure I was still alive and well. They even made a plan for what they would do if I were to have another seizure in the middle of a game. While the seizure wasn’t a big deal to me, it was proven that my health and life was invaluable to them. That meant and continues to mean a lot to me. 

By the end of my four years, I learned how to deal with adversity, manage my excessive amount of bodily sweat, cope with anxiety, strengthen myself physically, make friends, and run 75 sprints without taking my anger out on our coach. We accomplished many things, such as winning the conference in 2018, tying for conference this year, and winning the conference tournament. However, the most important thing that I gained from volleyball was not from the sport itself; it was the sense of belonging. When I fell into dark places in my life and felt that I had nobody but myself, I could turn to my team and see fifteen people that I knew and know will always have my back.