Club Volleyball Ethnography

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My cousin, who is now in the Hall of Fame, influenced my motivation to want to play volleyball when I grew up. Along with that, I was also influenced by all the older girls that were in the gym, from my mom being the head coach. For my little three year old self, watching all the older girls play it, I knew that one day I would want to be one of them as well. I started playing club volleyball when I was eight years old, but in the gym ever since I was three weeks old. Club volleyball is an opportunity to play volleyball outside of the high school or middle school sponsored activities (Klawrence). Club volleyball has impacted me in many ways because of the atmosphere that my teammates created, the relationships that are built outside of the …show more content…

As we are all humans, sometimes we have real emotions when an official makes a call that is not right. The behaviors on the team are certainly not the same from player to player, but we all know when a call is right and wrong. Every player reacts differently to things because of the way they were raised and who they spend the most time with. This is because humans are known to act and react to things the way or similar to the ways that the people they associate themselves with. For this subculture, the highest social hierarchy is the coaches over their players because they are the ones who make the big decisions on who to play and what rotation to start in. This is maintained throughout the whole season and for “out of season” training as well since it is their club and they decide how they want to run things and who gets to play or not. While some girls are worried about play time, it couldn’t be the sport of volleyball without the actual objects that are needed. There are many objects that are involved in the sport of volleyball, hence why it is one of the most expensive sports to play. One major object that is needed for the game of volleyball is a …show more content…

One way that I used volleyball was for therapy, through the love I had for the game. It was an escape from everything that was going on in my personal life. It really helped me grow and pushed me to put more meaning into sayings and phrases. One thing coaches would always say is, “leave everything at the door.” With this, it really hit on a personal level since my high school career was not the easiest. So, with this, it has made me appreciate the little things that help me with bigger challenges and volleyball serves as my therapist. The subculture of club volleyball has inspired me to create new friendships from the teamwork shown, the friendships from other teams that are made, and how I use it for therapy. With these three points, volleyball is important to me in many different ways, even though sometimes I don’t show much emotion actually playing. Some advice that I would give others who are interested in starting in this subculture is to know how much they want to get out of it, since there are many different levels of play depending on what they

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