Volleyball | telling family tales

Smith Fieldhouse - BYU vs Long Beach State

This week as I was deciding what to do to celebrate my 50th year I investigated going to a volleyball game. When I check the BYU Men’s team schedule I discovered that they had finished the regular season but they were playing Long Beach on Saturday. So I called Bill to see if he would be interested in going down to Provo to the game. He said that sounded great. A couple of days later my friend, Tricia called and I mentioned about the game and she wanted to go to. Then later in the week she picked up tickets for all of us in the reserved section. This was really nice because today we were slow getting clean-up from yard work and getting on the road. But even though we were late for the game we still had good seats.

Tricia and Raelyn at BYU volleyball game

BYU won the first two games and then lost the next two. It brought back so many memories of long drawn out games in the Smith Fieldhouse back in the early 80’s when I played at BYU. Some of those games we didn’t come out on top but tonight BYU got the momentum in the 5th game and won easily. It was fun to have Tricia there too. She has been really busy the last month and we haven’t gotten together since early February.

Yakira curled up at my feet - BYU vs Long Beach volleyball game

We also ended up with two puppies in training at the game. Our puppy club leader was evaluating a dog from another club and had too many dogs at her house so her puppy in training, Hallie came for the weekend. It was a great socializing experience for Yakira and Hallie with all the noise and all the people. They both adjusted to the new situation and slept through most of the game. They even did good with all the people who kept going in and out of their seat and so they had to climb over the pups every time.

It is interesting all the rule changes that have happened over the years since I played. The down official was one who refereed when I played. He has gray hair now. Another thing that shows the passage of time was to see Chris McGown coaching with his dad, Carl as one of his assistants. Carl was instrumental in teaching me how to play volleyball. I remember Chris coming by when he was just a little kid and hanging out at two a day practices or volleyball camps. Chris’s team is doing a lot of nice things. They had some amazing blocks. You can watch the game here.

BYU vs Long Beach State

The Sound of Music (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I got the chance to visit Austria the summer of 1983 with the BYU women’s volleyball team. So for this week’s 50 for 50 to celebrate my 50th birthday, I checked out The Sound of Music from our local library. The library has an amazing collection of videos that we enjoy. It has been many, many years since I watched The Sound of Music.

I enjoyed the scenery and the story but most of all I love the music. I couldn’t help but sing along with most of the songs. I remember songs better than most things and I love to sing. Growing up the records I remember most were from musicals. I would play them over and over and sing along. It was kind of late Sunday night when we started the movie so we had to stop at the intermission and finish it tonight.

I found out at Christmas that The Sound of Music of music is my mom’s favorite movie, so I’ll keep this so she can watch it when they come over for a visit this week.