Three to Get Ready #3: The Silly Cheers

This is the third in a series of posts that provides one dad's reflections on the last three months of his daughter's club volleyball career. They will appear every Friday until the JVDA Championships in Louisville, Kentucky.

For the uninitiated, the first steps into a convention center during a junior volleyball tournament are overwhelming. The first sensation is usually the sight of all those acres of sportcourt, battlefield after battlefield pieced together like so many jigsaw puzzle pieces.

Then there's the unforgettable blending of distinctive sounds: the chirping of referee whistles blowing plays dead, the chattering of parents as they discuss three-way tiebreak scenarios and, of course, the silly cheers. You know the ones I'm talking about:

"R-r-r-r-r-ooof!"

"Ace, ace, baby."

And let's not forget this classic: "My name is Chelsea and you know what I got. I got a team that's hotter than hot..."

With my daughter nearing the end of her club volleyball career, most of these cheers have already been relegated to the younger courts. But I still hear them as I walk through the convention center. And when I leave Louisville at the end of June, the silencing of these silly cheers will be deafening.

But why? Why will I get nostalgic about hearing little kids chanting juvenile rhymes? They were certainly annoying enough in their day, especially when my daughter was on the receiving end of "you got served."

In an attempt to find an answer, I started thinking about other places where groups of individuals gather together and chant in unison. I thought of two: in church and in the military. Think about it. It's easy to picture a congregation reciting a liturgy as one and anyone can imagine an infantry unit chanting as they're out on a pre-dawn run. But it's a little harder to picture everyone in the typical corporate office getting together and chanting, "We're throwin' the competition out of sorts...by filing all these sales reports." Really hard. OK, impossible.

So what do church-goers, soldiers and 12-year-old club volleyball players have in common that make it seem so natural for them to chant in unison while the rest of the world is playing it cool?

Maybe that phrase, "playing it cool," holds the secret. Each of these groups has an underlying sense that they can't afford to play it cool, to act nonchalant or uninterested about how things turn out. There's too much at stake. And they're not going to accomplish anything alone. They need to form a bond as they go out into the secular world, into battle or into a tough semifinal.

Is this a stretch? Maybe. But it's the only reason I can come up with to explain why I'm going to miss cheers that, on the surface, seem nothing more than nonsense.

Next Week: The Coaching Styles