Adversity is Your Companion

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Adversity is our companion. Accept that anything worth doing will challenge you. Leave your comfort zone. Never give up. Do hard better. 

Banner Day

Every season ends in tears.

Some are joyful tears, team tangled at midcourt, a dogpile of red and white beneath banners that did not help them win but remind them that others once did.

Some are tears of frustration, mascara and silence in a visiting locker room, the long bus ride home heavy with “almost.”

The match would start in a few hours. More chaos than chess on hardwood maple.

Red and white banners overlook the silent gym, memories of something special. Banners don’t win matches. They reflect sacrifice - early lifts, film sessions, bus rides that smelled of Gatorade and nerves. 

The gym itself sits in that middle ground - neither new enough to be antiseptic, nor old enough to be charming. Green hoses snake rainwater from ceiling seams toward the crow’s nest broadcast booth, as if engineering were an afterthought. Red composite stands, set well back from the court, hold rare wads of Wrigley’s and lollipop stems - artifacts of adolescence.

Gyms are theaters of joy and frustration. MVB postseasons seldom die at the Middle School. Symbolically, a defibrillator hangs nearby.

Team chairs sit opposite the stands, flanking a narrow cutout that leads to small offices. “Benches” are history. Nobody’s a benchwarmer anymore. Acronyms like ROOTS - Royal Order of the Splinter - are relics from another era. Roles exist. Contribution is expected. Identity is earned.

Many Melrose Volleyball players have plied their trade here - soaring above the tape, cooking pancake digs, hitting hard at the pins. They did whatever it took to vanquish opponents and imprint banners with numerals: league, sectional, state.

An area coach once labeled Melrose a “legacy program.” Others were less charitable, calling MVB “simple.”

If simple means collaborative culture, positive coaching, and consistent winning, then simple isn’t so bad.

Volleyball receives too little credit as a thinking person’s sport. Servers blend power, spin, and sector to craft edges. Attackers read seams and block hands in fractions of a second. Defenders rely on short-area quickness and the tiny reaction time of platform angles. A setter calculates tempo and mismatch like a point guard with gravity.

Chaos at speed.

Coach Scott Celli has piloted the program for as long as many can remember. Nothing immunizes a coach from criticism. Once sixteen consecutive league titles. Ten sectional crowns. One state championship. Those help. But banners cannot defuse a parent’s advocacy for minutes, role, or recognition. That advocacy belongs to the ecosystem.

Empty gyms conjure loud memories.

The echo of a clean kill. The hush before match point. The thud of a service error at 23–23.

Precious few players strike the ball with both sound and fury - power married to poise. Volleyball is the only sport where a parent can stand and celebrate a child’s kills with pride and without apology.

Losses bring lessons. No Melrose team has gone undefeated - not even the 2012 champions. There is always film to review. Always a serve to tighten. Always a seam to close.

Strong teams adopt an “anyone, anywhere” mentality. Raising your level means seeking better competition. Records don’t lie. You are what your record says you are.

Harsh New England winters frame the halcyon days of MVB. Snow banks outside. Steam rising from breath in parking lots. Inside, the season will unfolds - practices upon practices, habits layered upon habits.

And then, suddenly, it ends. Every season ends in tears. Because something mattered. Teammates became sisters.

Because banners, for all their limits, reflect something deeper, willingness to give more than was required.

The gym will go silent again. The green hoses keep dripping. The red stands wait patiently.

Until winter breaks.

And chaos returns.