Broadside Sports

Fernanda Bartels, Staff Writer

Lately, our team has been talking a lot about positive attitude. On the volleyball court, positive attitude is a state of mind where you feel motivated and confident in your skills and your teammates.

It also includes believing, thinking about the best outcome and never letting your guard down.

Positive attitude can be considered a way of life too. It is like wearing a “positive lens,” where you see every event from a positive perspective. For the context, let us think about positive attitudes on the court.

In a volleyball game, whether you want it or not, the opponent is going to score points. It is the nature of the game. Think about it: without the mistakes, no one would ever score. Consider for an instant that the opponent scoring a point is the concept of a negative situation.

How would you deal with it? How do you recover from a negative situation? Also, do not forget to consider that when playing volleyball, you only have control of the actions that happen on your side of the court. It can be a very frustrating game if you do not have control of your mind.

When a negative situation happens, we tend to try to find reasons behind the action. Maybe the block was not in the right spot on that play, or maybe it was just a good swing by the hitter. But more important than finding reasons why it happened, you need to get ready for the next play.

Whatever the situation, our team needs to get over it and keep playing. That is one of the reasons why we always go back to the center of the court after every point.
Meeting your teammates on the center of the court shows that we are there for each other, together, in a good or bad situation.

In order to recover from a negative situation, we have to think positively. If you do not think you are able to side out and get the next point, no one else will. Find your motivation, believe in yourself and get ready for the next ball.

That will happen again and again. It goes back and forth in a volleyball game. They score, we score and they score once again. They win a long rally, and we win fighting back.

What makes the difference by the end of the game is whether or not we were able to maintain our positive mindset throughout the game.

If we keep our confidence level high, we are able to overcome negative situations easily. That is what a volleyball match is all about.