The whistle echoed across the gym, and suddenly everything felt much bigger than it had during warmups.
The lights looked brighter now. The noise from the other courts sounded louder somehow, sneakers screeching across hardwood from every direction while parents clapped in random bursts somewhere behind us.
Volleyballs bounced against distant walls, whistles cut through conversations, and the announcer near the front desk kept calling court numbers over old speakers that crackled every few seconds.
A minute ago I'd felt excited. Now my stomach felt weird.
Tyler stood behind the service line holding the volleyball tightly against his hip while Coach Daniel gave one last reminder from the sideline. "Relax your shoulders first," he called. "Nice and easy."
Tyler nodded seriously like he was about to perform surgery instead of serving in a U10 volleyball game. Then he tossed the ball way too high, panicked halfway through the motion, and smacked it directly into the bottom of the net.
The San Marino bench immediately exploded cheering like they'd just won the championship. A couple kids jumped up screaming while Tyler stared at the net in betrayal.
"I hate everything," he muttered while jogging backward into defensive position.
Mason snorted beside him. "That ball had a family."
"Be supportive."
"I AM supportive."
The referee whistled again for San Marino's serve, and that was the moment I realized how fast real games actually felt compared to practice. During drills, everything happened in pieces. Coaches stopped rallies constantly.
People repeated reps over and over. Here, though, the scoreboard changed immediately. Kids rotated before my brain fully caught up. The whistle blew again before I'd even finished replaying the last mistake in my head.
San Marino's server, a taller kid with bright red shoes, underhand served the ball high over the net. For half a second nobody on our side moved confidently enough, and the ball dropped directly between Alex and Dylan while both boys reached for it too late.
Point San Marino.
Coach Mia clapped loudly from the sideline. "Talk EARLIER! Somebody has to call it before the ball drops!"
"I thought he had it!" Dylan complained immediately.
"I thought YOU had it!" Alex shot back.
"That's why we communicate," Coach Daniel added calmly while motioning everybody into their next positions. "Reset. Next ball."
The next serve floated over again, and this time Dylan yelled "MINE!" so loudly that even some parents in the bleachers laughed. He shuffled underneath the ball awkwardly and bumped it too hard, but at least it stayed playable. The pass flew high toward the center of the court where Lucas sprinted underneath it looking mildly terrified.
"HELP HELP HELP," he yelled while throwing both hands upward.
Instead of setting cleanly to the outside, though, Lucas panicked and pushed the ball backward over his own shoulder accidentally. Mason somehow lunged forward one-handed and slapped the ball over the net like he was swatting a mosquito.
And somehow it worked.
The entire gym around us seemed to pause for half a second because nobody expected the ball to go over like that. It landed awkwardly near San Marino's ten-foot line while two defenders stared at each other in confusion.
Point Stormbreaker.
Mason immediately started celebrating like a professional athlete. "THAT WAS COMPLETELY INTENTIONAL."
"It absolutely was not," Noah answered without hesitation.
I barely heard them because my heart was pounding too hard now. The game kept moving so quickly. Serve. Rotate. Whistle. Another rally. Another whistle. My brain tried grabbing every detail at once, the positions, the score, the sounds from nearby courts, Coach Daniel shouting adjustments from the sideline.
And then I shanked a serve receive directly into the scorer's table.
The ball came faster than I expected from San Marino's next server, but honestly that wasn't even the real problem. Another court nearby exploded cheering at the exact moment the serve crossed the net, and my attention snapped sideways automatically for maybe half a second.
That was enough. The ball hit the wrong angle of my platform and launched sideways into the table beside the referee stand. Papers flew everywhere.
Point San Marino.
Heat rushed into my face immediately. My chest tightened hard enough that breathing suddenly felt strange, and I could already feel my brain beginning to spiral into replay mode.
Wrong angle. Late feet. Shoulders too turned. Platform too...
Then I remembered Dr. Elizabeth.Not the office itself. The breathing exercises. Find something stable. Then breathe slower than your thoughts.
I stepped backward into position while the next server bounced the ball. The blue service line near my shoes. The squeak of Ethan adjusting his feet beside me. The feeling of my kneepads pressing against my legs.
Breathe in.
Out slower.
Again.
The whistle blew.
This time when the serve crossed the net, I stayed low immediately instead of hesitating. Feet first. Platform steady. Clean angle.
The ball floated perfectly toward center court.
Lucas smiled instantly while moving underneath it. "Nice pass!"
That tiny sentence helped more than he probably realized.
The rally kept going after that. Lucas pushed the second ball outside toward Dylan, who managed to send over a controlled free ball instead of trying to crush it. San Marino passed tight to the net, their setter chased it, and suddenly Noah read the play early enough to jump with both hands straight upward in front of the hitter.
The ball smacked directly into his palms and dropped immediately back onto San Marino's side.
The Stormbreaker bench lost their minds.
"NOAHHHH!"
"BIG BLOCK!"
"THAT WAS AWESOME!"
Even Noah looked shocked for a second before trying very hard to act calm about it.
Coach Daniel pointed toward him immediately. "That's exactly what middles do! Great timing!"
The score kept moving back and forth after that because both teams were still very obviously eight years old. Some rallies looked surprisingly organized for a few seconds with actual passing, setting, and hitting patterns. Then somebody would accidentally kick the ball or rotate the wrong direction and the entire gym would descend into chaos again.
At one point Alex forgot where he was supposed to stand during rotation and accidentally followed Ethan directly into the serving position.
"You're stealing my spot," Ethan complained.
"I got confused!"
"You literally copied me!"
Coach Mia finally walked onto the court laughing despite herself. She physically repositioned everyone one by one while explaining the formation again. "Setter right-back. Outside left-front. Middles stay central before transition."
Then she pointed toward me.
"Matteo, where are you covering from here?"
"Deep cross-court," I answered automatically.
"Good. Stay there unless the block closes line."
Everything made more sense once she physically moved everyone around again. That was the part I liked most about volleyball sometimes, when the court suddenly clicked together like puzzle pieces.
The set slowly climbed toward 11–11, and by then both teams had stopped looking terrified and started looking competitive instead. San Marino's bench screamed after every point now. Parents leaned forward in the bleachers. Mason started talking trash in the extremely harmless way only eight-year-olds could.
"You got lucky," he informed Caleb after a serve clipped the net and barely dropped over.
"That still counts," Caleb answered proudly.
"Barely."
Meanwhile Tyler missed another serve by several feet and immediately blamed "wind conditions," even though we were fully indoors.
The gym somehow felt smaller now than it had at the start of the game. Not quieter. Still loud. Still chaotic. But my brain had adjusted to it. The whistles stopped feeling sharp inside my head. The movement around the court started making sense instead of feeling overwhelming.
And somewhere around the middle of the set, without even realizing exactly when it happened, I stopped thinking about being nervous at all.