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Player Intros
RW is the father of NCAA Division I Volleyball player CW. RW initially pursued baseball, football, and tennis, hoping to play football in college. While his dream eventually went unfulfilled, he's been overjoyed to see CW achieve her goal of playing her sport at the collegiate level.
RW saw a competitive drive in CW from an early age; when her older sister walked her bike up a hill, CW, then 5 or 6 years old, decided she was going to pedal uphill, zoom down, and pedal back up again just to prove that she could. She captivated herself with the little details, at 5 years old making sure she was hitting the tennis ball in just the right way when playing, even in a casual setting. RW was kind enough to share his reflections on how he has seen both himself and CW grow as people in ways that contributed to their success as a father-daughter team.
RW's quotes are used as much as possible to reflect his story. The quotes have been edited for length and clarity, and have been reorganized to provide greater structure to the narrative.
Gameplan
pD: How have you seen volleyball shape CW's character?
RW: The very first year CW played volleyball... she never stopped. She had her volleyball in her hand all the time, and I would set up things in the backyard for her to practice serving. She would spend hours practicing serving over a rope I had tied in between the trampoline and the deck.
The number one character trait was resilience, and I don't know if it's what I said to her from day one or it's just naturally innate, but I told her from Day 1: "When you make a mistake, you have to forget about it, because there's nothing you can do about the point you just lost; you can only affect the next point." And to this day, when I see her, sometimes I'll say to her, next point. Next point.
Next point
That was the number one thing, that I see all these kids collapse under their own pressure, and it would build, and the other team's going after them because they're freaking out, and that never happened to her. She really moves on to the next point, and she's got enough confidence to where it's carried over in her normal life.
pD: How has that resiliency carried over into other areas of her life?
RW: Her initial school and volleyball team situation hasn't been great (CW is transferring to a different school in the upcoming semester); though she did well academically, the team didn't fit for her. I never heard her complain, not once. She would tell me what's going on, and tell me it needs to change, but she never complained about it.
I was very proud of her... to have the resilience to bounce back and say, "this stinks, how do I make it better?"She completed the transfer process herself without complaint. I think that was very much a lesson learned from volleyball.
Also, in a lot of sports, the academics get left behind, because it's just not important to them. CW is good academically, but... she would tell you that the focus she has been able to put on academics while being in college is from the time management, the mandatory study hall she had when she was on campus.
She had to find a middle ground in high school between academics and sports, and feels that if she had set a study time for herself, instead of taking a nap when she got home every day, she could have taken more of those AP courses she wanted. It benefits the earlier you learn time management, including scheduling fun for yourself. Her coach said that kids struggle academically more in their off-season than during the season because they have more free time and have not disciplined themselves.
pD: What growth have you seen in yourself as you've parented a high-level athlete?
RW: As a parent, you get to witness a variety of parents, there are a number of things you can observe and talk about... kids and adults being vindictive and getting down on themselves, conversations that would never come up outside of sports. Not only that, you get to talk about how to be a friend to that person, even if they're being rotten.
There's a lot of parents that that (college dream) is what they want, and they see what they want to see, and that's very, very difficult. It makes them not only competitors with their teammates, but enemies with some of their teammates.
I always told CW that "this is fun for me to watch you excel at something, but if it ever becomes mine, then it's a problem. It's yours, if you notice it becoming mine, if I'm becoming upset at your performance too much... then I need to change somehow."
If it ever becomes mine, it's a problem
Execution
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