Covid wasn’t a really big deal, until the whole world had to go on lockdown.

Now, after 3 years of switching between online school, in-person school, and the lockdowns, Covid mandates in the city are finally lifting up again, and we are in person. With that many school activities and events, like the PTA, clubs, Family Fun Day, and sports can resume.

After almost 2 years of no sports, SSIS has now officially decided to start athletics again for all grades and divisions in the school, kicking off the first season in HS with volleyball, swimming, golf, table tennis, cross country, and U15 basketball. Although all of these sports have a lot of players and are pretty popular in SSIS, in this article I’ll be focusing on Volleyball.

This year, we have 2 teams for each gender– Junior Varsity (JV) and Varsity, totaling 4 teams in total. Because of how long it’s been since people last played volleyball on the team and because of Covid regulations, most of the people who have played together are the seniors and juniors, while the people in JV are just getting used to playing with each other.

Since sports is such an important and fundamental part of SSIS, I asked some of the players on the teams' questions, and also looked at the volleyball schedule provided by the athletic council.

With sports coming back in SSIS, many other schools are also bringing back their sports teams too, allowing our JV and Varsity teams the chance to go against many schools before going back into bigger tournaments such as SISAC and MRISA. At the time this article is being written, none of our volleyball teams have lost yet, and won all the sets they played in.

On top of that, many players I interviewed expressed huge excitement about coming back to volleyball after Covid and getting to finally play games again. Here are some of the questions I asked the players:

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how excited are you for this season?” and “And why are you so excited/not excited for this season?” Thankfully, all of the players answered an 8 and above, and they all provided interesting answers. I asked this question because I wanted to know what their feelings were this season since it’ll be cool to know their thoughts.

“I am excited for this season because we get to compete in competitions like MRISA which has not happened ever since Covid. I think that sports tournaments with international schools from other countries are very helpful for athletes to motivate themselves because the thought of having to compete against other prominent schools is a kind of pressure that motivates us to perform better in practices and games.” - Yoonhae Cho, Varsity Girls

“Being restricted during Covid really drives my urge and desire to get active and play some volleyball which I've left off after the first month of Covid. Also I didn't get to play much volleyball last year so this year my excitement is that of a year plus.” - Thai Le, JV Boys

“How do you think the long hiatus and disruption caused by Covid affected you and your team's performance?” Since it’s well known that because of Covid, many normal activities had to be stopped and things such as training or getting together with people were hard, I wanted to know what the players thought of the effect Covid had.

“Due to Covid-19, many players on my team forgotten some of the basic skills like calling for the ball. However after some practice, we have gotten into the habit of screaming for the ball. Otherwise, we performed very well on the court despite having some minor communication problems.” - Claribel Le, Varsity Girls

“It's certainly easy to tell that nobody has played in about two years, but we will continue to work on that as the season progresses.” - Krrish Khansili, Varsity Boys

“What were your thoughts on the first game you played this season?”

“I think like every first games of any season for sports is a little wonky. It’s our first time playing a proper game which means our nerves affect our performance, but it is also a great way for us to learn what to improve and to personally for everyone to learn what kind of things we need to work on more and it gives coach the chance to learn what to work on more often during training.” - Ajin Lee, Varsity Girls

Thank you to all the players who responded and provided feedback for me to be able to write this article. It was really interesting looking at your responses and seeing what you guys wrote. I hope you guys achieve a lot of your goals this year and win MRISA.