Core Value # 1: Family

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

When I was 20 years old I read Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece Anna Karenina. Seven years later, I couldn't tell you much about the book, but I'll always remember his mysterious, haunting first line... perhaps the most famous sentence in all of literature. I don't know if all happy families are alike, and as Tolstoy implied, boring. But I do know that unhappy families are inherently unique, and in an interesting way, valuable.

Tolstoy certainly doesn't
look very happy.

Our first core value at Fredonia Volleyball is FAMILY. It inevitably conjures images of happy people, hugging, giggling, and being generally jolly, while staring at sunsets and eating ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. While we have our fair share of girls who enjoy their fair share of ice cream, it would be misleading to think that we value happiness all the time, or that it has to do with our core value of "Family."

At our preseason meeting I told our girls that our team would experience conflict, that an uncomfortable situation (or more than one situation) would arise in which our character and communication skills would be tested. Moreover, it was going to create a lot of unhappiness. We wouldn't know how it was going to manifest... maybe someone wouldn't do their share of the work and someone else would resent it, maybe someone would have issues with playing time, maybe someone would do something that went against our team values.  Whatever it would be, it wasn't just a possibility... it was inevitable.

And then it did happen. It happened two years ago when I started at Fredonia, it happened last year, and it happened again this year. And that's why we give the talk in preseason: because it happens every year. It happens with any group of people that share their lives together. Tolstoy knew it back in the 1870's, and we know it today.

My biggest source of pride as a coach this year has been our players' ability to communicate effectively
when conflict arose. It's just not typical for college students to face conflict head-on, particularly females... they usually think they'll make the problem worse if they confront someone. But our girls have shown a lot of courage and maturity this year, and their relationships evolve because of it.

It requires a decent into the murky waters of conflict, drama, and unhappiness (what we call chaos). Most people run from it, and are okay remaining shallow but comfortable (what we call psuedo-community). But when we know how to communicate with heart and honesty, we come to a rare thing:   FAMILY


~Ryan