If you’re ever looking for something to do at night, after you’ve finished all your homework, go down to the volleyball court behind RTUC and between KFAC and Griswold.

On most nights, typically around 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM, you can find a group of people hanging out and playing friendly games of volleyball. While these may be games played for nothing more than bragging rights amongst friends, most people involved like to take these games seriously as if they were competing in The Olympics. This simply serves as a way to for people to play as if the winner was able to take home gold medal. That said, don’t let a little competitiveness dissuade you from trying to play because the people involved will gladly give constructive criticism on how to play volleyball. This is a great way to meet new people with different majors and learn how to play a new sport. No prior volleyball playing experience is required in order to head down to play. Often you’ll find freshman playing games with their peer mentors, RAs, or FYEMs. Regardless you will always feel welcome to join in the fun.

People that go to play often play with standard volleyball rules, with a few exceptions. These exceptions are meant to make the sport easier for people who have never played volleyball before. A common rule omitted is calling out “lifts” on people. A lift is an illegal hit that would most likely be called in a more competitive game. While they commonly don’t play with lifts being called out constantly, sometimes when the games get intense people will play with standard high school to Olympic rules for competitive volleyball.

One student Marc Morros Bernat, an international student from Spain, played volleyball for the first time here at Millikin, and has fallen in love with the sport since. Bernat loves it when someone asks him if he wants to play volleyball later; he will almost always say yes. For Bernat, playing volleyball with people has been a great way for him to make wonderful friends during his stay here at Millikin for the semester.

Personally, I head over and play most nights and have met some amazing people through the sport. From playing, I have been able to meet many of the international students and have found that most of them are weird, but in a good way of course. I have played volleyball more times this year than I have ever before.

Head on down one night and see for yourself how much fun beach volleyball can be. People are almost always there and are definitely always willing to let people join in the fun, even if the teams are uneven. If you go to play one night and find that no one is there, simply bring a ball and invite everyone you know or everyone you think would be interested in playing volleyball. You’ll find that there are a lot of people that are interested in playing, and you may even discover that playing volleyball is one of your hidden talents.