IR Day 14 - Volleyball

Volleyball is fun. Once you get started, it’s hard to be annoyed at anything.

You aren’t terrible at it, you just have no precision when you’re bopping the ball. Luckily, neither does anyone else. You scramble around desperately with your team, trying to keep it from touching the ground. Some of you quickly get the hang of it, although there are a truly terrible number of failed serves because none of you play this sport.

Max is excellent. Rebecca is pretty good. Elena is great even without knowing what she’s doing. The rest of you are hopeless, even Lara.

And Yellow Team? Karin is absurdly terrible, but she’s loud and never stops bossing her girls around, even though at least to you… it looks as though they know more about volleyball than she does. They aren’t experts, but Karen’s girls pick up on something that yours don’t quite as quickly: when the ball is up near the net, you have to spike it. You just have to.

And they go for it. They seize every chance and just slam it at you as hard as they can, which is pretty damn hard. Those spikes send your team diving for cover and fleeing the ball. Only your toughest girls like Sheva will challenge it, but even then it takes a lot of skill to safely field something like that.

The game is close through sheer incompetence, but you are not winning. Max looks increasingly worn out compared to everyone else. She’s trying so hard! If it wasn’t for her somehow managing to always be in the right place at the right time, you would be losing by so much more. The Yellow Team girls are bad at volleyball, but incredible at spotting opportunities and taking them. That difference between their team and yours is going to cost you this game.

You dive and hit one and Viti gets there in time to push it over, but Mai just slaps it back down, sending sand flying.

This is brutal. You pick yourself, wondering if there’s something you can do to turn this around, but you feel curiously powerless. It’s a sport that you aren’t good at. It’s that simple.

You hear a commotion and turn to see Max lying in the sand.

Angela and Ana rush out and the game is put on pause. Max has to be carried off; she’s overheated. Tiff calls a timeout and makes everyone drink water in the shade. There’s not much time left in the game, but she doesn’t have any ideas and neither do you. You think as hard as you can, brushing sand off your chest and bottom as your teammates do the same.

Tiff looks rough. Like she knows something that the rest of you don’t. You see her looking at the producers, who are having the time of their lives. You’ve got a bad feeling about this.