I started playing volleyball in middle school and I thought it was fun and that I was better than average at it. I tried out for my school volleyball team all 4 years of high school. Each year I thought I should have made the team, and each year I was cut during tryouts and didn’t make the team. In my 4 years there, there were 4 different head coaches, a different one each year, and I think there was a junior varsity team every year too. So even though I thought I should have made the team every year, I had 4 different head coaches telling me no, they didn’t think I was good enough even for the junior varsity team.
My senior year, I really thought I should have made the team, even more so than in previous years. But as the coach read off the list of players who made it through the first round of cuts, he did not say my name. Ugh. Again. Four years in a row.
I really believed I should have made at least the first cut, so I asked the coach a few minutes later if by chance he forgot to read my name. I can’t remember what he said exactly but he did say it was a mistake and that he meant to read my name, he didn’t mean to cut me. I believed him but also thought he might just be being nice. The next round of cuts, he looked right at me and read my name first and I breathed a sigh of relief. I ended up making the varsity team that year, earned a spot as the starting setter, and even made second team all league.
If you’re doing something you enjoy and believe in, keep going, maybe you are good at it. And maybe others will recognize that one day.