Bryan's Volleyball Journey

Hello hello guys ~ Bryan is here!

How’s everyone’s courses going?

I hope y’all are enjoying your courses this semester. Because, guess what? I am not enjoying my start of the semester so far. I am starting my second semester in nursing program, and we are rushing into a super hard course called Pathophysiology. The professor gave us a quiz during our very first class, and assigned tons of reading to us. So I have been spending my weekend and two snow days just trying to go over the materials TAT.

But that’s fine~ Because I can take a break from all the school works by participating in Intramural sports league!

If you don’t know what intramural league is, basically, you make your own team (or join one), sign up online, play with different teams during the season, and the winners get a T-shirt as the champion of the season!

For my very first blog, I want to share with you guys how I started playing volleyball thanks to the opportunity that intramural league provided to me.

“Haikyuu!” (photo from http://www.geekbomb.net/)

Before I started playing volleyball, I mainly played basketball. Then, someday, I came by an anime called Haikyuu! I was so fascinated by volleyball after I finished watching this anime. I thought volleyball is cool because miracles can always happen in the court. Fantastic receives and “impossible” saves are constantly happening. Hence, I made up my mind to learn how to play volleyball.

I was lucky that my roommate was a volleyball fan too, and he agreed to teach me volleyball. However, we were not able to find a court to play, so we played at Foss field with just two of us. There was nothing much we could do except for hitting the ball and receiving it. I was rolling on the grass trying to make difficult receives. I got myself all messy, but it was so fun!

I liked receiving, but I knew that was only one part of volleyball. I wanted to learn more! So I called some of my basketball friends, set up a court in Olsen gym with badminton poles and badminton net, and we tried to play a game. It obviously did not go well. My friends didn’t like the pain caused by receiving the ball, and the net was too low to play. 

When I was struggling to find a court and teammates to play volleyball, intramural volleyball entered my sight. Intramural league book Olsen gym and set up the court when games are happening, and we just need to show up to play. Additionally, people can sign up to the league as a free agent, whom any team can recruit them. During J-term 2019, I and my roommate created a team in Beginner League Intramural Volleyball. We recruited all the free agents, so we had enough players to play. Our teammates were all interesting people who wanted to learn how to play volleyball. We learned and played together during last season and became good friends. We lost in the semifinal, but I had a fun time playing with my team. Although I am still not as good in volleyball, I will keep practicing my skills in Intramural League. Here is a video of me and my friend practicing spikes in this season.

Volleyball Spike, video by Yohei Masuda (2019)

For those of you who are interested in signing up for intramural sports, team sign up for this season (early spring) has already ended. However, you can ask your friend and join their team at any time during the season. And next intramural sports season is coming up soon after midterm.

Anyway, who wants to play some beach volleyball? 

Snow Volleyball, photo by Dongyou Yuan (2019)

 





















Bryan Yuan
Feb 21st, 2019