Evanson: If you’re not a fan of volleyball, maybe you should be? Especially now

Published 1:30 pm Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Have some time to kill this Friday? If so, find your way to either Forest Grove, Marshfield/North Bend or Ridgeview High School and catch one of the least appreciated but most exciting sports that prep athletics have to offer—volleyball.

As the high school soccer playoffs work their way into their latter rounds and the football postseason gets underway, the 2024 volleyball season will commence this weekend when state champions will be crowned in all classifications Saturday in Forest Grove, Coos Bay and Redmond.

Beginning Friday morning, teams from across the state will gather in the aforementioned towns and at the aforementioned schools with dreams of hoisting one of the 1A thru 6A trophies awarded to the best of this state’s best.

There will be girls both short and tall, young and younger, and I assure you, loud and louder. Because while the sport is about blocks and digs, aces and assists, and of course the proverbial kill, it’s also defined by the unrivaled enthusiasm that comes as the result of the individual plays which are celebrated by the team in an unmistakable way, and via an equally unmistakable conduit — screaming, and lots of it.

I assure you that’s not a knock on the game and those who play it. In fact, while I admittedly find myself taken a bit aback at times by the perceived enormity of what to me feels like a relatively innocuous point, I at the same time marvel at the level of energy put both in and taken out of every exchange.

Football has down plays; soccer down minutes; basketball uncontested lay-ins; and baseball and softball, innings of seemingly meaningless action. But volleyball, especially in the type of championship atmosphere you’ll find at state tournament venues later this week, is high intensity from start to finish both on the court and off.

You’ll see — and hear — it from the players, sense it from the coaching staffs, and feel it from the stands as parents and fans live vicariously through their kids’ and fellow students’ actions on the court.

I don’t know how these girls do it. I get it, they’re young and one of youth’s privileges is energy in spades. And while I can’t anymore relate, I can vaguely remember a time when rest and relaxation was more of a nuisance than the requirement it has become. But to do what these players do, as often as they do it over a three to five set match, leaves onlookers both in awe of their skill and athleticism, along with the stamina necessary to maintain it throughout.

These are complicated and stressful times for many. In the midst of an election that has people twisted in a manner counter to proper mental or physical health, and what will be in the wake of that same election come Friday, volleyball could be the break you need to re-set your perspective going forward.

It’s exciting, impressive, undoubtedly emotional, and from an athletics perspective a refreshing reminder of what life can and in many ways should be about, opposed to what as adults we make it to be.

It is just a game, but often games are the best reminder of what’s right with the world. And in a time when all people seem to want to talk about is what’s wrong — games might be just what the doctor ordered.