Spiked

In the final week of Ivy play the Big Green vol­ley­ball team pulled off a spec­tac­u­lar 3-1 win against Prince­ton, ru­in­ing Prince­ton’s hope to be a con­tender for the Ivy League title. Dur­ing the game, there was no doubt in our minds we were going to win; it was like a flash­back to when we were 7-0 dur­ing pre­sea­son and were feel­ing in­vin­ci­ble. It was very sat­is­fy­ing to get back the same con­fi­dence we had started the sea­son with, three months ago. As a se­nior, it re­ally was all I could ask for dur­ing my final week­end rep­re­sent­ing the Big Green. If it was a per­fect world, we would have beat Penn on Sat­ur­day and taken them out of the run­ning for the title too, but play­ing two high en­ergy vol­ley­ball games back to back re­ally does take a toll on your body; es­pe­cially OLD bod­ies like mine. So, we were re­ally nice and dropped our last game 3-1 to Penn, al­low­ing them to still be in con­tention for the title with Yale; I mean we couldn’t just GIVE the title to Yale like that, they need to work for it a lit­tle.

The Penn game was tech­ni­cally the “Se­nior Day” game, mean­ing that Jessie Hart­man ’11 and I were the cen­ter of at­ten­tion. There was a nice lit­tle cer­e­mony of sorts at the be­gin­ning, tal­ly­ing off all of our ‘amaz­ing’ con­tri­bu­tions to the pro­gram over the last four years. The an­nouncer listed off all of our im­pres­sive stats, but hon­estly I think it would have been more en­ter­tain­ing to know how many pounds of ice and rolls of ath­letic tape I used over my col­lege ca­reer. Re­ally the best thing about Se­nior Day were the ENOR­MOUS posters of our pic­tures that were put up in the gym. And by ‘best,’ I mean em­bar­rass­ing. At the end of the night we got to keep them and now I have this huge poster of us in my room, mak­ing me seem ei­ther re­ally nar­cis­sis­tic or just creepy.

Over­all “Se­nior Day” was good, but it still has not set­tled in that I am ac­tu­ally done play­ing sports for Dart­mouth. I just re­al­ized that I will ac­tu­ally have noth­ing to com­plain about any­more. Most of my com­plaints over the last four years have had to do with my lack of time (due to prac­tice and train­ing), my de­te­ri­o­rat­ing body (due to being old) and the lack of sleep (due to the com­bi­na­tion of the two pre­vi­ous rea­sons). Now what am I sup­posed to com­plain about? The weather? WAY too stan­dard. I try to strive for ex­cel­lence in my com­plaints. I guess I’ll have to move onto com­plain­ing about the male-dom­i­nated so­cial scene or the clear in­equal­ity of Col­lis ver­sus Food Court. You know, real in­tel­lec­tual stuff.

But don’t get me wrong, even though all ath­letes com­plaints usu­ally de­rive from their sport, we love it. A friend of mine put it per­fectly by say­ing, “The only thing worse than play­ing vol­ley­ball, is NOT play­ing vol­ley­ball.” Which is the God given truth of col­lege ath­let­ics. How­ever, many peo­ple have con­soled me by say­ing that once you are an ath­lete you are al­ways an ath­lete, which is slightly com­fort­ing. I will say though, every­one bet­ter watch out for all the newly re­leased ’11 fall ath­letes in the next cou­ple weeks, pong games and frat base­ments may no longer be safe due to in­creased com­pe­ti­tion and cel­e­bra­tory de­bauch­ery.

So as I em­bark upon my twi­light months of “non­ner-hood” I say adieu Dart­mouth, thanks for read­ing. Watch vol­ley­ball next sea­son be­cause the ‘12s are going to do some big things and there is no other sport as en­ter­tain­ing and span­dex-clad as the sport of vol­ley­ball.

Spiked,

Kelsey J.