Volleyball was one of the first sports I took up after the pandemic. I never thought I would end up doing volleyball, but I gave it a try, and now it's the sport I'm most passionate about and the only sport I would put all my effort into. When my health issues started my freshman year, I was not able to do any sports. When I went to quit volleyball so I could get better health-wise, I ended up getting depressed, but then I started working on coping with the issues and trying everything that I could just so it would get better.

The health issues I had were constant acid reflux. It was to the point that my chest would be burning from when I woke up to when I went to bed. I ended up having to be on medication, and the medication would switch a lot. Still, it got better right before volleyball season, so I gave it a try and was able to continue this last year. I did unfortunately end up getting asthma, but I learned to cope with everything, and now I'm so used to it that it doesn’t bother me as much as it did in the beginning. I do still have some doctor’s appointments here and there for the issues because they want to make sure that I’m eating normally, but still watching what I eat, and if it hurts my stomach or not. Part of the issue was that I wasn’t able to eat a lot of things because they would hurt my stomach, so I was losing weight, but now that I’m able to eat those things again, I started to gain a little weight again, but they are still concerned about it. I’m still struggling with gaining weight and losing weight because I really only seem to be losing weight rather than gaining weight, but I’m working on it.

Every time I step onto the court, practice, or game, I give it my all. Anytime we took water breaks, I wouldn’t take as long as everyone else just so I could go right back to practicing and become a better player than I am now. It is mentally challenging for me because I get in my head more than I should, but that doesn’t stop me from giving it my all and trying to quit the bad habits and pick up the good ones. I became a setter a little bit after the season started, and I ended up playing all the way around with no breaks other than in between sets. It can be a lot, but once I got used to it was really easy. It does take a while to get the hang of a new position when switching from one to another, but it gets easier. I find setting a natural thing for me, it just kinda clicked with me. Right when I started, I was already jump-setting, so this upcoming season I’m going to continue working on jump setting and getting better as a setter so I can hopefully

achieve my goal. I was a setter for jv but hopefully I will be on the bench for varsity. Even if it's just being on the bench, I wanna work to get better as a setter so I can become a varsity setter.

I have learned that life is hard and sometimes things happen that are out of your control. But I also learned that I can handle difficulties and overcome hardships. I now know that I am stronger than I ever thought I could be.

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