What Does "Not Competitive" Mean?

A lesson in volleyball and humility

Hi friends and welcome newcomers!
This one’s dedicated to Liane, who was very forgiving.

 “Would you like to play volleyball?” asks a friend.

“I’d love to! But I’ve got joint issues.”

She laughs. She plays with a coed group of athletes, former athletes, and nonathletes, all aged 55-plus. “We’ve all got joint issues.”

My people!

By volleyball she means water volleyball – in waist-deep water, where we are standing. Her friends begin stringing a net across the pool.

I take inventory. Left knee, replaced last year: still swollen, but functional. Right knee, having witnessed that bloody surgery up close: silently soldiering on. Shoulders, wrists, back: Achy in their quotidian way but not acutely inflamed.

“Okay, let’s see how it goes,” I say, my heart already jumping erratically in my chest like an eager kid.

“It’s not competitive,” she adds, as if that would further entice me.

It’s what? I am not familiar with the term. What does “not competitive” look like? How does one do that? And why?

I last played volleyball in high school, 50 years ago, when my team vied for the state championship. Water volleyball is different. We do not keep score. Each team can hit the ball as many times as needed to get it over the net. When a server accidently serves the ball into back of his own teammate’s head, everyone laughs.

To my delight, my body remembers how to send the ball skyward with one hand, hammer a serve with the other. Normally my knees refuse to jump – but in the pool, I leap to block balls, arms forming a fence above the net, then splash onto the watery cushion, laughing. So much fun!

But before long, I notice that my supersonic serves are basically un-returnable. And when I spike a ball into the water in front of a 72-year-old woman, and the water splashes her, she laughs good naturedly but the look on her face says fear. Uh-oh.

I shrug apologetically. “I don’t know another way to play.”

A teammate kindly explains: “We consider it winning when we have a long rally.”

Ohhh!

My friend Nancy Hogshead, an Olympic swimmer who won three golds and one silver medal in 1984, comes to mind. “I was 30 before I realized that the goal of Monopoly is for everyone to have a good time,” she told me recently.

What? The goal of Monopoly is not to accumulate hotels and bankrupt everyone else?

Serving the ball in a loopy arc is harder than smacking it full force because I’ve never developed that skill, but I catch on, and my shoulders thank me for it. Refraining from blocking shots requires restraint, but my knees thank me for it – as do my opponents, nonverbally. They happily receive balls I send their way, bumping them back over the net. We enjoy long rallies. Everyone has a good time.

Later, at a restaurant, I run into the player who redefined “winning” for me. “How are your joints?” she asks.

“Sore but that game was so worth it.”

“You were smiling the whole time.”

“And we won!”

She laughs. “Absolutely. We all won.”

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