Leaving the volleyball team was the best decision of my life

“Pick up your fucking shit!” he yelled as he aggressively threw my stretching apparatus at me.

I was shattered. I went from feeling proud of myself for playing in my first spring season volleyball game representing Wake Forest to feeling tears welling up in my eyes. I was devastated, confused, and hurt. Out of nowhere my head coach had snapped.

As I would learn in my time on the volleyball team, this type of incident wasn’t an anomaly. It was a normal, if not daily, occurrence.

I began to dread practices, fearful of what would happen next.

One practice, he kicked me out of the drill for “looking uninterested.” He then made me run bleachers with ankle weights on for nearly an hour.

My fear and unease of the head coach only increased when, during another practice, a teammate of mine missed a “tip.” A tip is a ball that falls close to the net. When the tip hit the ground, he reached a point of no return with his anger and began to yell and scream at the team, demanding us to run for over an hour because of this miss.

This running wasn’t typical sprints – it involved diving onto the ground for what felt like a thousand times.

Some of my teammates – and these are tough athletes – were sobbing. Fearful of calling attention to myself, I sucked in tears and continued with the punishment.

I kept thinking, “When is he going to let us stop? Our first ACC match is only a few days away. Why is he beating us up like this?”

Halfway through the punishment, he shouted at us to cheer after each rep. We cheered. He then deemed that our cheering wasn’t loud enough. So we cheered our lungs out, hoping he would end the punishment. The next rep he yelled at us for cheering and demanded that we took our consequence seriously. So we stopped cheering. Then he yelled at us to cheer, or the punishment wouldn’t stop. So we cheered.

It felt cruel and manipulative. All we wanted was for it to end, but he seemed to relish taking advantage of his position of authority and knowing that we all had to listen to him, whether it was fair or not.

When I committed to Wake Forest as a volleyball player, I knew it would be tough, but he was not the type of tough coach I was anticipating. As far as I was concerned it felt as though his goal wasn’t to make me a better player – it was to humiliate and degrade me.

***

None of this experience, the beginning of my college career as a student-athlete, was what I had hoped for.

When I first stepped foot on Wake Forest’s campus, I fell in love. How can you not? The beauty here seems to cast a spell on you. The blooming magnolia trees, the historic red brick buildings, and even the grass that looks like it can’t possibly get any greener.

Everything exceeded my expectations, and I knew that this was the school for me. Not only that, but I decided that I wanted to be a student-athlete here.

When I verbally committed to play volleyball at Wake Forest, it was my ultimate dream come true. Everything I had ever worked for in the classroom and on the volleyball court had come down to this, and I’m not going to lie… it felt INCREDIBLE.

Little did I know that joining the volleyball team at Wake Forest was not going to be the fairytale ending that I had always dreamed about.

When I first joined the team, I was so disappointed to hear that some of my teammates didn’t like the coach. I started to hear all of these stories about him, but I resisted them, refusing to taint the perfect image of the school and my life—that is until I started experiencing his abuses myself.

Throughout these experiences, I completely lost my passion for the sport. Volleyball, once my personal safe haven, had turned into my living hell.

***

In March of my sophomore year, I felt I had no other option than to remove myself from the team, but I knew in my heart I wanted to stay at Wake Forest.

Leaving an abusive coach may seem like an easy decision, yet it was one of the hardest choices I ever had to make. Doing so meant risking my full scholarship, which would put a huge financial strain on my family.

As standard procedure, The Committee on Scholarships and Student Aid had a hearing in which I could appeal the removal of my athletic scholarship.

As part of the hearing, I was allowed 15 minutes to make a statement for my case. Family members were not allowed to attend, nor could I have legal counsel in the room.

There I was, in a room full of Wake Forest faculty, members of the athletic department, and, the most daunting of all, my head coach.

I stood up in front of the committee and my coach and told them my story. I talked about what my head coach had put me through right to his face and for all of the committee to hear.

Those 15 minutes felt like an eternity. Once I finished, a sense of release flushed over me. I had done it. I had conquered my demon, and he had sat there and watched me do it.

That initial relief was short-lived. When the committee gave the coach a chance to respond to my statement, he denied everything.

And it seems they believed him. A week later, the committee emailed me saying they had decided to uphold the decision of the athletic department to remove all of my athletic aid.

Reading that email was deeply disheartening. Not only because I had lost all of my financial aid, but because I felt like the committee didn’t believe my story, which was the worst hurt of all.

When The Tab Wake Forest contacted the Athletics Department last week, they chose not to comment on this story.

***

When I left the team, I completely lost my identity. And finding a new one was hard for me, especially being 6’2. Getting looked up and down by people and being asked, “How tall are you? Do you play a sport?” became dreadful. I didn’t know how to respond.

Yet I felt an incredible sense of freedom. Not only was I removed from my intense athletic schedule, but, I was also out from under his unwavering control.

The transition from student-athlete to just “student” was confusing at first, but it has become my greatest blessing. Leaving volleyball has helped me discover and embrace new passions, develop new friendships that I wouldn’t replace for the world, and, most importantly, it has given me tremendous courage.

In losing myself, I also found unconditional support at Wake Forest.

I found the most amazing professors, students, and staff members who helped me fall in love with this community all over again.

Although I lost myself here, I was also found. I now see Wake Forest once more, as I saw it when I first stepped foot on campus, full of color and beauty.

I learned that my identity is much stronger than “Ciara, the volleyball player.”

I am “Ciara, the student, the writer, the activist, the optimist” and much more that’s still waiting to be uncovered.