The Real Deal (James Neal)

Prologue

Volleyball is a sport I loved to play since I was 5 years old. All the brothers and sisters, even my parents, all played hockey. I was the odd one out and never really got into playing hockey as much as they do. All brothers got drafted into the NHL and my sisters are playing internationally.

Once I started to play volleyball, it was pretty hard to break the news to my parents that I didn’t want to play hockey. They’ve tried to make me play, but it just never worked out. They learnt to accept it and now they are proud they did.

Growing up and being the only one in the family that doesn’t play hockey was hard. No one knew how to play, so I never really got any time to practice. That was until the day I met this girl named Amanda Neal. At first I thought was related to James Neal but apparently she isn’t.

Anyway, we met in grade 5 and we had become best friends ever since. Amanda and I became best friends through volleyball. Everyday after school we’d go to a recreation center and book the whole gym just so we could practice. We were both really passionate about making it big in volleyball.

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Now we were at our final game before the National Championships. This game was win or lose, whoever wins, goes to the National Championships. Our team was super nervous but knowing how we played throughout our season I knew we would have this game in the bag.

“Alright girls. I just want to say a couple of things before this game starts. We’ve all done great up to this day and we cannot let anything in the past distract us from winning this game. We are so close to being National Champs. Honestly, the other team isn’t even good. Amanda and I have played with the captain before and she’s not as good as we are. I watched a lot of their games last night, they don’t have that team bond that we have. I have great faith in this team and I know we can win this today. If you make a bad play, shake it off and think about the next point we are going to win. Amanda, you have anything to say?” I asked I looked at her in out team huddle.

She shook her head, “Okay. I guess we should head to the court.”

We all put our hands in the middle of our huddle, “Panthers on three!! One, two, three, PANTHERS!” we all yelled and we were off.

My three brothers and two sisters were here, my parents said they would be late and a whole bunch of my cousins were here too. Amanda’s family was here as well. The six of us on the court got into a little huddle, waiting for the opponent to be ready.

We had first serve and I was up first. The ref passed me the ball, I grabbed it and looked up at him. He looked at me, blew the whistle and motioned me to serve. All eyes were on me at this point. The gym was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I bounced the ball, eight times. Just like the number on my jersey.

I took a deep breath, tossing the ball up less than a meter taller than me. Once it started to fall a couple inches, I hit that ball right towards the backcourt.

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We were in the second set of the game. We were down three points from the other team. Only 6 points and we could head to National Championship.

Our team had won the first set by a landslide. The score was 25-12 in our favour of course. The other team had put up a good fight in this second set, but we couldn’t let this happen to us.

I told our coach to call a timeout and he did. We all walked back to the bench. I somehow had to get this team to be motivated.  We needed to push 6 points to not play a third set.

“Alright ladies. I just wanted to tell you that I really do believe in this team and I know coach and the rest of you do too. We need to communicate more, call the ball, go for it and don’t let it hit the floor. It’s 6 points and I know we can do this. Remember when we were behind 15 points one time and came back to win? That’s because we wanted it, so we fought for it. That’s what we have to do now. Coach?” I finished and looked at him.