I got back late last night from a little family road trip. My brother, Aaron, and I traveled out to Hutchinson together to meet up with my parents and watch my sister’s volleyball team play.

My sister, Amy, is the head coach at Seminole State, a community college located in Seminole, Oklahoma. It’s about four or five hours away from Topeka, so I haven’t had the opportunity to go down and watch her team yet. But this weekend they were playing in a highly competitive tournament in Hutchinson, a reasonable 3-hour trip from Topeka.

Unfortunately, Amy’s girls didn’t win any of the games I got to watch (I missed their first win against Barton County). I know Amy was disappointed with that, but I was still very proud of her and the way her team played. I mean, the teams they lost to were nationally ranked in the top 20 in the country, including the team currently ranked first. And while they never won a match, they did play several of them very close.

It also seemed like luck was stacked against them as they really didn’t have many extra players on the bench. So if one of the girls started struggling, Amy didn’t have much to work with in terms of making a quick substitution. And two of her typical starters were sidelined with injury, again stacking the odds against them.

The whole weekend brought back lots of fond memories from my days of playing volleyball at Cowley County. Althought my team was never nationally ranked, we did have a great time together and it was a great life experience for me.