I first got into volleyball around Grade 6, when I was 11, in Cambodia. A big reason for this was my family. Growing up, I loved watching my older siblings play volleyball for the ISPP Falcons, my school team at International School of Phnom Penh. It’s such a nostalgic feeling looking back. I remember thinking to myself, “I will never be able to join the volleyball team”, because I was shy, introverted, and unsure of my own abilities at the time.

I was now in the second semester of Grade 6. Watching my sister's fast dives, receives, and saves during matches slowly changed how I saw the sport. I couldn’t help but watch online videos on how to play volleyball, and soon I found myself copying movements and drills in my room, imagining what it would feel like actually to play. It remained like this until this one time. One day, my older sister suddenly asked me to join a volleyball session with our cousins.

You see, I come from a volleyball family. My older cousins all play on their school teams, and every Friday evening, all the older cousins and my sisters have a fun volleyball hangout at a cousin’s court. That one day, my sister called me to attend the volleyball hangout. At first, I was confused, because she had never invited me before I asked her kindly why she was bringing me along this time. She replied, annoyed, that our parents wanted me to come. I didn’t know it at the time, but that small decision by my parents would completely change how I viewed volleyball.

After attending one “big cousin only” volleyball hangout, I realized that all those YouTube tutorials and role-plays I did in my room really paid off. It was my first time playing real volleyball, and I felt surprisingly comfortable on the court as if I was a natural. My sister and older cousins were impressed by how fast I was able to play. I started to show up more frequently in these hangouts on Fridays. Over time, I realized that I wanted more than just family praise.

I then started playing casually at home on weekends or after school. I remember asking my drivers if they wanted to play with me. We would set up a net and play from afternoon until sunset, sometimes even until it was too dark to see properly. At that time, volleyball felt like a game, but it was already slowly becoming part of my routine. Looking back now, this was the moment where volleyball stopped being just something I watched from the sidelines and started becoming something that shaped who I was.