The volleyball season has recently ended and I have looked back on what a big impact it had on me. I spent almost five months with the girls on my team whom I did not know at all before the beginning of the season. As the months of the season continued, we formed friendships like I have with no one else. I would see my teammates for only one purpose, volleyball. The weeknights and weekends I have spent with them created some of my favorite memories that I could never imagine with anyone else.

One of my greatest memories was a weekend in February at a tournament called Capitol Hill. It was our biggest tournament; it had teams from all over the country and over 150 courts. We spent the entire weekend running around Washington D.C. with my friend Alexa’s Jumbo sized JBL speaker in her volleyball bag. We would walk by groups of people who would look at us confused about where the music was coming from. Walking through the streets obnoxiously, singing and dancing while everyone stared, was embarrassing at first, but then my friend made me realize I’d never see any of these people ever again.

In the mornings there was a man in an office building a few blocks from the convention center where we were playing, and as we walked by with our speaker, he would look down from his glass window on the 12th floor and wave. He was there every day at the same time watching the street and waving at anyone who would wave back.
My teammates brought out another side of me that I don’t typically show because parading down streets singing in random places is a lot easier with these friends on the streets of DC than it would be at home.

D.C. was filled with memories including on the second night when we went to all the major tourist attractions and then went out for dinner. We were leaving dinner as my friend realized that she had forgotten her black volleyball in the middle of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She went back and searched for it only to find out from a security guard that they took it to the police station to be processed as a threat. My entire team found this really amusing because the bag said “Kazi” on it, and that is what made them consider the bag a threat. I have never been involved in a situation like that before which is why I’ll never forget it.

That weekend along with many countless hours I have spent with those 10 girls has left me with memories I will never forget. It is hard to think that I will never play with the same 10 girls ever again, but I look forward to playing with others and making new memories next season.