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I started playing volleyball when I was in elementary school, it was always just for fun with my family at the park or in their back yard. I remember not being very good at all, I would be nervous whenever it was my turn to serve because all the pressure would be on me, I wouldn't know the formations or positions, and it didn't help that I played with older people that knew more than I did in the game because it only added more anxiety to me. But in middle school is when I joined the volleyball team. I remember when practicing underhand serves I would have the ball in my left hand, but I would position the ball so that more of it was hanging off the part of my hand that was closest to my right side. And I did not move my arm in order to not move the ball out of it's position. I did this in order to not hit my left hand while serving. This is representative of the limb-segment coordination in stages of learning. Because I would keep my left arm as still as possible in order to freeze some degrees of movement so that I could more easily underhand serve with as little errors as possible. Also because I was concentrating so much on the position of the ball and my left arm I would sometimes not hit the ball hard enough resulting in the serve not making it over the net. I was so focused on not hitting my hand and hitting the ball that I was not paying attention to other things. This is representative of conscious attention, because I devoted so much of my mental ability on performing this one skill, serving. As I continued to practice skills, I noticed that my rate of improvement was very rapid (from stages of learning). For example I went from underhand serving to be the only one who could consistently overhand serve on my team within a span of 2 weeks after learning how to underhand serve properly which took me about a week and a half. I remember when I first started serving overhand I would throw the ball up really high and time the contact with ball which was the way I was taught by my coach but the timing was very difficult. So as the practices progressed throughout the season I changed my overhand form to throwing the ball lower so that I wouldn't have to wait and time a ball falling from a high height. Instead I threw it up only a couple inches above my head, I would arch back a little bit and then hit the ball. This resulted in me being more accurate and more consistent, and having more powerful serves which helped us win points during games. This is an example of how I altered my old coordination pattern to a new pattern which helped me perform better.

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When I  was in middle school I can say that I learned many skills that became good at. I was still a novice at serving, receiving and playing defense. One thing that I did have, was endurance, because growing up I was always active so running during practice did tire me out, but not as much as some of my other teammates that were new to the sport. The most challenging skill that I learning during my volleyball experience in high school was the skill of setting. Setting is the thing that most players run away from because it is not as fun or flashy as playing offense like spiking the volleyball or playing defense. Also there is a lot of pressure on the setting during competition and practice because everyone is looking and counting on you so very little people were brave enough to become our official setter. I was one of those people who also didn't want to set, but our coach made everyone practice setting for at least 2 drills during practice because he wanted us to have a good foundation of skills and not just  have 1 skill. I remember when I first started learning how to set I would repeat things out loud, like "make sure your hands are spread out" "bend your legs" "focus on the ball" "relax your hand" "make sure the ball doesn't spin" I would always repeat that during practice and outside of practice. Aside from saying all those things, I was also constantly thinking about it while setting, because the skill is so hard to you must focus in order to develop skill at it. (cognitive stage of stages of learning). As I continued to practice setting, I noticed that I would primarily set with my thumb and first two index fingers for some reason. I did not purposefully develop that motor pattern it just happened after many practices and one day I just noticed that I was doing it. But even though this wasn't "ideal" setting form I was setting more consistently. Meaning that the ball wasn't always slipping out of my hand, I could start to control where I wanted the ball, being more accurate. Also with control I was able to set balls that fell from a higher height with some confidence that the ball wasn't going to slip out of my hands and hit me in the face. Also I was able to control somewhat the amount of spin that was on the ball, because when you are setting you don't want any spin on the ball. (2nd stage, establishing motor patterns of stages of learning). I can't say that I have gotten to the level of setting where I don't have to think about it, because I do still make mistakes, like the ball slipping, accuracy so I do think of things like the ball spin and position. But I am consistently able to set, I can implement some various of sets during play as a part of strategy, and I have more confidence now so I don't think much of setting, I just do it. Instead of focusing on the actual set itself, I focus instead of where my hitters are, where are the blockers, how high the net is and how close or far away do I need to put the ball from the net so that my hitter can hit the ball to the best of their ability. I think that I have hit all three stages of learning the cognitive stage, when I was always thinking about setting, the associative stage when I realized how I was setting, and developing confidence and making improvements with setting to now the autonomous stage where I don't have to think about the setting itself, but more of the other aspects of setting like what type of set, the position of the set, and the player hitting the ball.

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I remember during practice I would always pay attention. Whenever we would do passing drills I would take mental notes of how my stance is when serving, setting or playing defense. I was more skilled at defense in high school, I don't know why but it was easier for me to do, maybe because I was more flexible and could position my body better in order to pass better. But I would notice that if I stuck out my arms during a serve receive play and sank my butt down, so that I would be in a low squat position, it allowed me to pass more accurately for some reason. I also noticed that if I stayed on the balls of my feet whenever in the serve receive position I could move faster to receive a ball that I needed to get but didn't come directly to me. Because of this skill that I had developed during practice, my coach named me as a libero which is the player that is specialized in defensive skills or the player who is the best at defense on the team. I was proud to assume this role, because defense wins games my coach always said. Due to my ability to develop rules or schemas I was able gather relationships between past environmental outcomes and used certain motor programs to produce the outcome I wanted. And I was only able to accomplish this during practice because it gave me time so I was able to associate certain motor behaviors/patterns that allowed me to be successful in passing.

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While competing there is always communication, whether it be with your coach, your teammates or the other team communication is always good to have and participate in. During games in high school I would be one of the main voices on the court giving feedback to other people. For example one of my teammates Paul was a novice at volleyball so during serve receives I would tell him where to move in order to be in good position to receive the ball based on the server. So sometimes I acted as a coach to some of my teammates who were less experienced than me because I felt that my experience was valuable for them to know in order for them to improve their skill. Sometimes when our team wasn't performing to the best of our ability our coach would recognize this and call a time out and have a little talk with us. I remember one game he told us that we need to not focus so much on the score, because he saw that we were checking the score a lot, he told us to focus on the game and not the score. After that time out we were able to refocus and win the match. I feel that's what coaches are for, because sometimes when I am in the game I'm too focused and it then makes me sloppy, so sometimes I need another perspective to help me refocus so that I can perform to the best of my ability. The type of communication or augmented feed back is necessary when playing sports. Because I gave some augmented feedback to my teammate Paul he was able to improve his skill the same thing happened when our coach took a time out and talked to us. Without that feedback from him we wouldn't have been able to refocus and perform at a higher level.

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Winning is always the main goal, whenever we would play against another team, we always had a group huddle and everyone focused on winning together. I especially had a routine where I would listen to music that would pump me up and I would imagine winning, I would imagine giving good passes, I would imagine giving good serves so that I would be in the mindset that I am not going to lose this game and that I will give it my all. In games during moments where there were pauses, like in between serves, during timeouts or during substitutions I would imagine how I would play once I had to perform. For example every time it was my turn to serve I would take a deep breath and mentally picture where I would serve , who I would serve to, and how I would perform the serve. I would picture my arm swing footwork, and this really helped me be not only successful at serving but everything else, like passing, setting and spiking. All of this internal imagery helped me set expectations of myself and my teammates which gave me a goal to work towards, which resulted in me performing well. When I was not in games I was always thinking about how I would do things, like how I would move my feet in order to improve my spiking footwork, what does my body position look like when I'm passing, hitting, or setting and how could it be improved. When I was not physically practicing I was mentally practicing, which helped because when it came to physical practice I was able to not struggle as much if I did not mentally practice. Imagery and mentality are essential to winning, if you don't think or if you don't see yourself winning it won't happen, but I am grateful to have learned this early on and my teammates also know this which has allowed us to win when participating in tournaments.