GALWAY–I come into the gym, as always late, and all my team mates are already playing. I leave my stuff in the locker room and I join the team. Everything is like always–the coach is setting the net and the girls are passing the balls to each other. Three of them are in a corner talking about the latest gossip in school. I give a bad excuse to the coach about my tardiness and I take a ball. The coach finishes setting the net and tells us to find a partner. He calls out some exercises and we try to do them, but the balls go everywhere but to where our partner is. Someone isn’t even trying to do it well, so the coach gets angry and tells her to run till he says to stop. She doesn’t feel like running, so she refuses to do it. Everybody laughs about it. The coach gets even angrier and he says that if we’re going to behave like that he’s leaving. Then the people start going back to the exercises so he gives up and stays there. Then he plans to play a game, so he makes two teams. The game starts.  We don’t  pass the ball, most of the serves are poor and the ball hits the ceiling every time.  The time to finish arrives so some of us dismantle the net and everybody starts their way home.

That would be a normal volleyball practice in my team back in Spain. Our team name was Lizardi Institutua after my school. We trained two times a week and the games were on Saturday mornings. As you can tell from the description, we didn’t play seriously, it was just for fun and we didn’t even care about losing nearly all the games of the season.  I played volleyball there for four years.  The first year  we didn’t win even one game and during my second season we won one.  The last two seasons went better–we actually won four or five games. However, the girls on my team always spent more time critiquing the appearance of the opposing team, than their way of playing, which was much better than ours. We were “the disaster team”.

When I came to Galway, I thought that it would be great to continue with volleyball and hopefully improve my game. I was sure they would be so much better than my last team (and me) so at first I was a bit scared. And when I attended the first try out, I realized how good they were. Their serves and hits were awesome and they made three passes before throwing the ball to the other side of the net. Another foreign exchange student from Germany, Anna, and I were the new girls, and I think we both were quite amazed about the level of these girls. I nicknamed them “the dream team” in my head.

The biggest difference between the team in Spain and in here is the effort the Galway girls make. I really admire them because besides they are really nice and they help me.  They work hard and they give 101% both in games and practices.

No team achieves the victory without a good coach to give support and help, and my coach in Spain and my coach in Galway, Jennifer Flinton, are very different. Coach Flinton has played volleyball for 6 years and this is her 14th year coaching. Coach Flinton connects with her players–she knows how to make them feel better.  She likes her team to be happy and for us to have smiles on our faces because we play better when we are happy. And I can say as a player that it’s true. She sometimes plans the practices at home and if the people attending the practice changes, she improvises some other exercises.  Normally nobody misses practices because they take it seriously.

I really feel I am becoming a better player while here.