Assignment 4: Joining an Organisation

When we arrived in London and were told we had to join an organization, I was kind of caught off guard.  Even though I obviously wanted to meet new people, it seemed a bit intimidating to just join a club.  There's always that fear that people won't include you because you're new, or even AMERICAN.. Ha!  Luckily, that was not the case when I decided to join the volleyball club through the University of London Union.

I emailed a few people from their website, and it was extremely tough to get ahold of people to begin with.  Finally, the coach of the women's team emailed me back and said we were welcome to join any of the practices they hold once or twice a week.  Tess and I went to the first one and were kind of nervous.  When we arrived, some of the girls look at you like you don't belong on their territory, but most of them ended up being extremely personable.  I was amazed at the multiculturalism of the team.  Only one of the girls on the entire squad was from England (not even London) and the rest were from a variety of countries ranging from Mexico, to Italy, to Portugal, and a couple from the US.

I was also extremely interested at the differing skill levels in the girls.  Some of them looked like they had never played before, others would have easily played division one volleyball back in the states.  The coach seemed extremely laid back at times during the practice, but then during other parts he became very stern.  It made it hard for me to adapt to his coaching style because I was never sure when to take him seriously.  The practices varied a lot from what we would do at home.  Normally, we would probably do about 10-15 different drills during one practice at home, and these practices were extremely concentrated. We normally focused on about four drills during each practice, so they all lasted for about a half hour each, which got extremely tiring at times.  As a player that focuses on defense in the back row, the coach had me hitting in the front row for about half the time during practices, which I was not used to at all.

Overall, the girls were pretty welcoming at the beginning and became more and more encouraging as our time went on.  By the time we were done practicing with them, I felt like a part of the team even though we weren't at games or even every practice.  It was refreshing to be able to play volleyball away from home and work on my skills for next season at school!