Key to My Success

Key to My Success

The loud roar from the crowd, all my teammates giving me high fives, and my coach ecstatic and nodding his head, right after I blocked that volleyball. I’ve been playing volleyball for over eight years; however, I have only played the position of a middle blocker for the past five years. A middle blockers’ footwork is the key to their success. The number of hours and repetitions I have put in on just footwork is beyond me. As a result to this I have found myself to not think about even using my footwork to transition from the middle blockers’ position to the right side or the outside position.
As I prepare to begin my mission to use my quick footwork and block the volleyball, I ready myself mentally feeling many different emotions from being nervous to excited. The first thing I physically do is smoothly get myself in the “block ready” position, as my coach calls it, by getting a nice solid stance, which is having my feet slightly wider than my shoulder-width. Not wanting to only jump two inches off the ground I get into the “coil position”, this is where a person would bend their knees slightly so they can either jump up and aggressively attack an over pass or move gracefully from one side of the net to the other just like a ballerina would. In order to attack those quick over passes that fly just above the net or the quick attacks from the opponent, I need to have my hands up, ready, and at eye level.
In order to block a ball at the right side or outside position I need to decipher how far the other hitter is away from me along the net. The quicker, shorter footwork is normally used for when you are three to five feet away from the opponent. This movement is called a side step, however, I think of it as a sideways bunny hop. Either name would work to describe it because when I do my footwork I mix up how I do it, sometimes I take a swift hop over to my opponent or I take one step with the foot closest to my opponent hitting and I bring my opposite...

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