Having a ball

Ask any of the A-C Central/Virginia Lady Knights their favorite memory from this season, and very few will point to something that actually happened on a volleyball court.

The Lady Knights broke the school record for most wins in a season and became the first A-C Central or Virginia team to play in the state tournament. But despite all the success the Lady Knights had on the court, they had most of their fun off it.

“I don’t think we’ll remember the games at all,” said A-C Central coach Kristy VanMeter. “I think it’ll be the friendships and the memories we’ll have. We had so much fun on all the trips, and in all the practices. It was really fun this year.”

The Lady Knights will remember their matches at Redbird Arena, of course, and they’ll remember winning regional, sectional and super-sectional titles.

But then there were the times the team spent just hanging out.

“I’m of course going to remember the games and how we did, but I’m going to remember the fun times, going to tournaments and going out to eat and stuff like that,” said senior outside hitter Taylor Jacobs. “Staying at the hotels was the best, and our team was so close, those were the best memories.”

The Lady Knights bonded in some of the simplest of ways.

Take the time the team went out to eat and Jacobs ordered chicken fingers with a side of ‘state champs,’ as her teammates snickered behind her. Or the time they went to Olive Garden and Kayla Birdsell had eight breadsticks before her meal — even though her coach warned her not to.

In the team’s final practice before leaving for the state tournament, VanMeter gathered her players around to create a mental checklist of the things the team had to bring with them to Normal.

VanMeter thought the first items her players would mention would be jerseys or shoes. Birdsell was the first player to speak up, reminding her teammates that they couldn’t forget their swimsuits.

The Lady Knights and their coach believe it was moments like those that brought the team together.

“I think that was one of the most important things,” VanMeter said. “We just had a blast this year.”

The team had plenty of down time at the state tournament, and most of the players’ parents were there with them. The team never split up, though.

“They could have gone with their parents, but none of them wanted to do stuff with their parents,” VanMeter said. “They all wanted to stay together as a team.”

Team activities included jumping on the beds at the hotel and performing skits before bedtime — things that most parents just wouldn’t understand.

But becoming a team is serious business. The Lady Knights would often spend part of their practice time doing team bonding activities, where the main goal was to learn things about their teammates, with the ultimate goal of enhancing communication.

In one activity, the team was split up into small groups, and each group was assigned a color. The team color corresponded to several pieces of construction paper strewn over the gym floor.

Each group then designated a person to wear a blindfold while the rest of the group tried to tell them how to locate the pieces of paper.

That was just one of many planned activities designed to help mold the players into a team. The unplanned activities helped, too.

“When we stayed together and did things together, it always made us closer,” Birdsell said. “Once you’ve been together for a long time, you don’t even have to try. It just comes together on the court.”

The Lady Knights’ coach said she saw it happen.

“The enthusiasm grew with the girls all through the year, and it wasn’t just the way they were playing,” VanMeter said. “It was just being together.”

And now that the season is over, the Lady Knights are finding that it’s not so much the volleyball that they miss. It’s the time they spent hanging out and having fun with each other.

“We’re one of the closest teams ever,” said senior middle hitter Kelsey Honkala. “We’re all best friends, and we all got so much closer going to state and going to tournaments, and we’re all sad that it’s over.

“We miss it already.”