Chip Shots: My Favorite Summer Volleyball Memory
May 26, 2023 at 8:56 p.m.
Chip Shots: My Favorite Summer Volleyball Memory
By Chip Davenport-
They were usually the days I did my most “summery” things, so I’ll buy into the term.
I hope your 101 days of summer are safe and fun.
This morning, with this fantastic weather and currently living in a county where lake life and its warm weather rituals abound, I’m waxing nostalgic.
We didn’t have travel baseball and basketball when I was a teenager, but we had hot stove baseball, rec league slow pitch softball, open gym for basketball (but we preferred concrete and asphalt outside courts), and some football conditioning starting in mid-June.
We competed back then without leaving our neighborhoods. The closest thing to travel ball we had was if you made your league All-Star team and played an extra week or two at county fairs, or glamorous Ohio venues located in Barberton, Massillon, and Canton.
I knew no strangers in my village as a kid, and I spent a lot of time either walking for miles or jogging in my neighborhood and through the two other villages by the shores of Chippewa Lake.
Sometimes my summer running workout would be efficient and effective, but the later I launched exercise in the daytime on weekends, the harder it was to keep my workout going at a vigorous pace.
I not only waved to almost everyone I saw, but sometimes the neighbors who waved back asked me to stop and tell them how I was doing.
Those neighbors were usually the older adults, or summer kids and their parents seeing me for the first time that year. Local year-round kids my age were savvy, conditioned to know rather than asking me how I was doing, and consequently having me talk their ears off, they would just say something to encourage me to keep moving like, “run a mile for me, man.”
Most of my summer weekend days – I had the good fortune of having mostly Monday-through-Friday summer jobs – were packed with an attempt at working out, a swim and sunbathing at our tiny beach, helping out skiers who needed an observer (you really had to twist my arm to sit in your Ski Nautique for several laps around the lake), pick-up basketball games, sandlot football, and a religiously scheduled Sunday volleyball game in the early afternoon.
The latter was a weekly-played competitive string of volleyball matches up to the last Sunday of August among almost always the same group of people.
Everything else I did on summer weekends was blocked out for what seems to be two or three hours each Sunday from the ages of 14 through 19 – eeeeevvvvvvrything else!
We never had a headcount issue because at least half the players were from one family, the Navratils. They had nine kids altogether, and the father – even in his 60s – would make his way to the lakeside volleyball court with at least five or six of his children. When they started getting married, I recall two spouses joining the fray.
Fielding twelve players was a piece of cake, and if there were more, we would use the classic rotation to the left front court to be sure everyone had plenty of reps.
There were so many Navratils we called them the Osmonds (when they were not present) because they were so nice, they stayed tight, and every summer each one of them came out to the village almost every weekend.
Most of these people were at least seven years older than I was, but they were competitive, whip smart, and very funny. They usually came looking for me on the beach when it was time to play, so I must not have been too much of a pest.
It was most amusing to see the Czech patriarch bicker with his own kids over a questionable call. The Navratils did not kowtow to their dad when it came to competition.
There were no liberos back then (1978-1983), but we had some people who would run you over to field the first serve or the ensuing returns coming over the net as if they were a libero.
We played about 10 feet from the mouth of a creek that fed its way down to the Tuscarawas River and eventually into the Ohio River, but we were able to jump into its edges to retrieve errant bumps, sets and spikes landing in the water before any such incredible journey would have been made by the game ball.
We didn’t use a rubber ball, so it would sometimes get so waterlogged if our play was lackluster, it quickly began to feel like we were volleying a medicine ball.
I strongly believe my skills at keeping the ball in play were driven by fear of adding water weight to the game ball.
One day, though, an extra group of about seven kids from an extended Irish family (from Lakewood, Ohio if you even care) who were also athletic, competitive, and in the village almost every summer weekend strutted to the waterside court with the opening challenge, “Hey, Osmonds, have you ever played for a Michelob Light before?”
I roared with laughter for several reasons. That challenge comment was a commercial tag line back then, and the challenger called them the Osmonds to their faces. The cat was out of the bag, but no one even flinched, but they asked, “What did you call us?”
I brought everyone up to speed on the Osmond thing so we could step away and watch two (among many back in those days) big Catholic summer resident families throw down for a Sunday battle between the Czechs and the Irish.
I told our usual volleyball group, “Hey, let’s sit it out. The Gillespies aren’t gonna wait around to play the winner. This is only going to be interesting if it’s played with no outsiders on either side of the net.”
We outsiders agreed.
“And no harm mister Mr. Navratil,” I continued. “We call you guys the Osmonds all the time because there are a lot of you, you’re tight, and every one of you still come out here every weekend, so let’s see you guys go at it!”
The Gillespies asked me to make sure their beers didn’t get knocked over from errant ball flight, and the game was on.
It was one of my favorite volleyball Sundays, and we “outsiders” did more cheering and laughing than we did competing that day, but none of us felt like we lost our edge from missing out on competing for about 90 epic minutes.
Enjoy your weekend, and thanks for the taking trip with me down Memory Lane.
They were usually the days I did my most “summery” things, so I’ll buy into the term.
I hope your 101 days of summer are safe and fun.
This morning, with this fantastic weather and currently living in a county where lake life and its warm weather rituals abound, I’m waxing nostalgic.
We didn’t have travel baseball and basketball when I was a teenager, but we had hot stove baseball, rec league slow pitch softball, open gym for basketball (but we preferred concrete and asphalt outside courts), and some football conditioning starting in mid-June.
We competed back then without leaving our neighborhoods. The closest thing to travel ball we had was if you made your league All-Star team and played an extra week or two at county fairs, or glamorous Ohio venues located in Barberton, Massillon, and Canton.
I knew no strangers in my village as a kid, and I spent a lot of time either walking for miles or jogging in my neighborhood and through the two other villages by the shores of Chippewa Lake.
Sometimes my summer running workout would be efficient and effective, but the later I launched exercise in the daytime on weekends, the harder it was to keep my workout going at a vigorous pace.
I not only waved to almost everyone I saw, but sometimes the neighbors who waved back asked me to stop and tell them how I was doing.
Those neighbors were usually the older adults, or summer kids and their parents seeing me for the first time that year. Local year-round kids my age were savvy, conditioned to know rather than asking me how I was doing, and consequently having me talk their ears off, they would just say something to encourage me to keep moving like, “run a mile for me, man.”
Most of my summer weekend days – I had the good fortune of having mostly Monday-through-Friday summer jobs – were packed with an attempt at working out, a swim and sunbathing at our tiny beach, helping out skiers who needed an observer (you really had to twist my arm to sit in your Ski Nautique for several laps around the lake), pick-up basketball games, sandlot football, and a religiously scheduled Sunday volleyball game in the early afternoon.
The latter was a weekly-played competitive string of volleyball matches up to the last Sunday of August among almost always the same group of people.
Everything else I did on summer weekends was blocked out for what seems to be two or three hours each Sunday from the ages of 14 through 19 – eeeeevvvvvvrything else!
We never had a headcount issue because at least half the players were from one family, the Navratils. They had nine kids altogether, and the father – even in his 60s – would make his way to the lakeside volleyball court with at least five or six of his children. When they started getting married, I recall two spouses joining the fray.
Fielding twelve players was a piece of cake, and if there were more, we would use the classic rotation to the left front court to be sure everyone had plenty of reps.
There were so many Navratils we called them the Osmonds (when they were not present) because they were so nice, they stayed tight, and every summer each one of them came out to the village almost every weekend.
Most of these people were at least seven years older than I was, but they were competitive, whip smart, and very funny. They usually came looking for me on the beach when it was time to play, so I must not have been too much of a pest.
It was most amusing to see the Czech patriarch bicker with his own kids over a questionable call. The Navratils did not kowtow to their dad when it came to competition.
There were no liberos back then (1978-1983), but we had some people who would run you over to field the first serve or the ensuing returns coming over the net as if they were a libero.
We played about 10 feet from the mouth of a creek that fed its way down to the Tuscarawas River and eventually into the Ohio River, but we were able to jump into its edges to retrieve errant bumps, sets and spikes landing in the water before any such incredible journey would have been made by the game ball.
We didn’t use a rubber ball, so it would sometimes get so waterlogged if our play was lackluster, it quickly began to feel like we were volleying a medicine ball.
I strongly believe my skills at keeping the ball in play were driven by fear of adding water weight to the game ball.
One day, though, an extra group of about seven kids from an extended Irish family (from Lakewood, Ohio if you even care) who were also athletic, competitive, and in the village almost every summer weekend strutted to the waterside court with the opening challenge, “Hey, Osmonds, have you ever played for a Michelob Light before?”
I roared with laughter for several reasons. That challenge comment was a commercial tag line back then, and the challenger called them the Osmonds to their faces. The cat was out of the bag, but no one even flinched, but they asked, “What did you call us?”
I brought everyone up to speed on the Osmond thing so we could step away and watch two (among many back in those days) big Catholic summer resident families throw down for a Sunday battle between the Czechs and the Irish.
I told our usual volleyball group, “Hey, let’s sit it out. The Gillespies aren’t gonna wait around to play the winner. This is only going to be interesting if it’s played with no outsiders on either side of the net.”
We outsiders agreed.
“And no harm mister Mr. Navratil,” I continued. “We call you guys the Osmonds all the time because there are a lot of you, you’re tight, and every one of you still come out here every weekend, so let’s see you guys go at it!”
The Gillespies asked me to make sure their beers didn’t get knocked over from errant ball flight, and the game was on.
It was one of my favorite volleyball Sundays, and we “outsiders” did more cheering and laughing than we did competing that day, but none of us felt like we lost our edge from missing out on competing for about 90 epic minutes.
Enjoy your weekend, and thanks for the taking trip with me down Memory Lane.
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