My Volleyball Story: Allison Lawrence

Each Wednesday throughout the summer, Montana volleyball student-athletes and coaches will tell their volleyball stories. Read, in their own words, what the sport means to them and where their passion and drive comes from.

My Volleyball Story: Allison Lawrence Allison Lawrence_Oregon State

I feel as though I have lived many volleyball-lifetimes.

There is the part of me that was an athlete in the game and there is the part of me that has made coaching volleyball a vocation and a passion. It can often be assumed that once an athlete who loved playing the game is finished competing that they get into coaching as a natural extension of their identity as an athlete and a drive to continue to 'hang on' to the ways they loved the sport. This is possible, but it is not always the case; my relationship to volleyball is very different from what it was when I was an athlete.

When I was young I was profoundly shy. Social interactions were difficult for me and I spent most of my time with my family and extended family, or alone reading or running around outside. I had an early introduction to tennis – a sport that I loved and still love dearly – and came to know sports as an individual quest inward. Me vs Me. This was appealing given my personality, and the fact that I picked the game up easily meant I was in heaven. Why do anything else, ever?

After about four years of full-immersion tennis identity, I was forced to attend a volleyball camp. 'You'll like it', my parents said. 'We played it with our friends in college and we loved it', they insisted… and off to the University of La Verne summer volleyball day camp I went.

And somehow, during that day, there was a shift.

Allison Lawrence_Oregon State

There was something about volleyball, for me, that was so natural emotionally. I didn't really have to be loud or talkative like I'd assumed, I just had to communicate what was going on around me and I got to celebrate when good things happened. The amount of high-fives was staggering. But somehow, all 1,000 of them (just in that session alone) had a purpose: celebrate something we did, move on after a mistake, simply add repetition and routine during dead time so we could reset. Rather than feeling like I was in a chess match against myself, I could let the team carry some of my weight, some of my stress. And I could help carry theirs. I was shy but intensely wanted to connect with others – I just didn't know how to do it. Until suddenly, I did.

Since then, as an athlete, volleyball became a sanctuary. It was safe and I made sense there. Safety did not mean comfort, however – an important distinction that, as a positive point of friction allowed for some of the most profound lessons of my life. I loved the safety of training – practice was joyous; I was with my friends, I got to hit the ball as hard as I could for 2 hours (one of my favorite things about being alive) and I got to problem solve how to win drills and improve my skill. I got to laugh, make mistakes and be free of the stress of being a teenager and studying for AP exams. The better I got, the more discomfort was involved – because the road to mastery demands tough feedback and constant curiosity, both about the game and about oneself.

Volleyball allowed me free access to a crucial component of the path toward a meaningful life: an education. As a collegiate athlete, I lived a life-long dream of competing at the highest level I was capable of and I got to study things that moved me so deeply I can't imagine my life without those classes, those lessons, those professors. A humanities education gave me the tools to challenge everything I had previously known about myself and about the world; I was taught not what to think, but how to think.

My memories from that time are jumbled and a bit dream-like. I don't have the memory that some athletes have of scores and wins and how it felt in each moment. Perhaps because I am still in athletics, and as my career as a coach lengthens, I have spent just about as much time coaching as I have competing. What I remember, though, are the moments I got to be a really good teammate – I got to give the best of myself to someone else. The gratitude I feel for the opportunity to be a teammate is not something I can fully express. That, to me, has been the greatest joy of being an athlete and has informed the ways I do relationships to this day.

Allison Lawrence_coaching_2011

I never intended to be a coach. I wanted to teach. Somehow though, volleyball crept back into my life while I was in graduate school and I realized coaching was this incredible blend of teaching life and teaching team – and with all those high-fives I'd been missing. I had an ex-teammate, Gina Schmidt, who was an assistant at the University of Montana and she asked if I'd ever consider coaching with her there, should they have an opening. I said I would. And then they did.

Missoula is a place you will move to without ever needing to physically see it first. A description of the Clark Fork River running through downtown, the community support, the vibrant college-town feel and the people that make up the University of Montana and I was in the car – moving to Missoula with my befuddled but excited husband next to me – taking the job. I came here because I was drawn to a way of life where the natural world is a constant presence and force. I have stayed here and have had kids here and made a life here because of our community.

Allison Lawrence_coaching_2019

Montana Volleyball has become one of the greatest sources of pride and joy in my life. I am forever indebted to our athletes for allowing me to do this phase of life with them, and to co-create a program with them that reflects their values and demands the best of us all.

I thought, in the beginning, that I loved coaching because I loved volleyball, but that isn't exactly true. I do love volleyball, but not in the same way I used to. Volleyball is a vehicle for this deeper, vaster thing that I realized I received as an athlete and now hope to create and teach as a coach. I coach because I love teams. And I don't mean just any team. There are many ways to 'do' team and most of them don't get to experience this world of depth and joy that is below the surface. Because the way to that place is through extremely hard work. And loyalty. And humility. And love. The way to that place is through intention and courage. The way to that place is so far beyond winning and losing and playing time and confidence and success …

If you find yourself curious about how playing volleyball allows you to be a part of a team that will teach you how to use your life to improve the lives of others and the communities we share, keep going. It is there. The best part is, while we all have to eventually stop competing, the true journey that good teams teach never ends. Allison Lawrence_coaching_2019

July 22 – My Volleyball Story: Harper
July 15 – My Volleyball Story: Wallingford
July 8 – My Volleyball Story: Horning
July 1 – My Volleyball Story: Hallisey
June 24 – My Volleyball Story: Moreno
June 17 – My Volleyball Story: Garrido
June 10 – My Volleyball Story: Vander Ploeg
June 3 – My Volleyball Story: Godwin
May 27 – My Volleyball Story: Gleasman
May 20 – My Volleyball Story: Nestegard
May 13 – My Volleyball Story: Semadeni

University of Montana Athletics

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