By Michelle Yin and Ronald Batista
One of the soon to be graduating seniors, Aida Ali, has been on the volleyball team for four years. She plays the positions of Hitter, Middle, and Outside. Ali has played volleyball since middle school and decided to continue the sport during high school. She recalled how she has ended up joining the sport and said that “[her friends] and [her] were thinking of doing something after school in eighth grade, and then when [she] found out about high school volleyball, [she] decided to apply [herself] to tryouts” and ended up remaining in the sport.
Ali stayed in the volleyball all four years with a passion to surpass her previous years, and she described the team as having a “sense of family” and she likes surrounding herself with her teammates. Ali enjoys playing volleyball, for it is the place to let her relieve all her stress and forget about everything and just focus on volleyball.
Some of her strengths in volleyball consist of being a good server, and communicating well with the rest of her team, calling for the ball and setting a role model figure for the rest of the team. Ali is also really supportive of the team, as she tries to always support them the best she can. Ali furthermore spoke about some of the things that she needs to work on, “Performance wise, [she] [needs] to work on hitting constantly and as for interacting with other players, [she] [needs] to open up more to [her] team”.
Being part of the team, Ali described how she loves being part of such a diverse group of people. She clarified to that “[the team has] such different personalities…and [it is] so fun to be around them”. Her goals for the season are for the team to give it their best shot and try as hard as they can. “[She wants] to leave those games knowing that all of us played well and that [they do not] have any regrets.”
After high school, Ali has decided that she wants to play volleyball but she is not sure if she wants to play for a division, but she is considering intramural or playing on her free time as club.
Being a senior, she also gave some information on how she kept up with being a varsity volleyball player and as a student. She elucidated on how she uses all the studies she has and she also always catches time before the games to do some homework, and even after games. She does sports yearly around so she has learned to manage her time around sports to finish all her work from school as well.
As for the remaining of the season Ali explained that she is physically ready, but mentally she still needs to prepare. She also said that there is always something that she can improve on. During her free time, Ali works and ends up relaxing to Netflix.
Her teammate and team captain senior Tiffany Tortora has said that “Aida is really supportive and [she] always helps others with positive feedback”.
Aida and her teammates look forward to a successful finish to the season.
