Chapter Two: Learning the Wind
By the time I turned seventeen, I knew something the ocean had been trying to teach me all along.
The wind was never the enemy.
It only punished people who ignored it.
Every Saturday morning began the same way. I’d throw my volleyball, a towel, a peanut butter sandwich, and two bottles of water into a faded blue backpack before the sun climbed high enough to burn the morning fog away. My grandmother would already be awake, humming gospel music in the kitchen while she packed extra fruit into my bag.
“You’ll stay longer than you think,” she’d say.
She was almost always right.
The drive to Manhattan Beach became part of the ritual. The streets slowly filled with bicycles carrying surfboards, runners weaving around tourists, and pickup trucks loaded with volleyball poles. It felt like the whole city was waking up with one purpose—to spend another day beside the Pacific.
The first thing I always did was take my shoes off.
Not because I couldn’t wait to play.
Because the sand reminded me to slow down.
Every beach had its own personality. Manhattan Beach felt serious. Hermosa Beach laughed louder. Huntington Beach seemed to welcome everyone equally. Even before I understood volleyball strategy, I understood those differences.
The older players said you couldn’t rush the beach.
I tried anyway.
During one practice, I jumped early on nearly every block.
My coach, Rick, finally blew his whistle.
“Logan.”
I looked over.
“What are you chasing?”
“The hitter.”
He smiled.
“No.”
I frowned.
“I’m trying to block.”
“You’re trying to predict. That’s different.”
He tossed another ball over the net.
“Watch their shoulders.”
Another swing.
“Watch their feet.”
Another.
“Watch the set.”
After fifteen minutes I hadn’t blocked a single ball.
But I had finally started seeing volleyball instead of simply reacting to it.
Life worked that way too.
My grandmother always noticed things before everyone else.
She noticed when neighbors stopped smiling.
She noticed when friends sounded tired over the phone.
She noticed when someone needed help before they asked.
As a kid, I thought she was lucky.
As I got older, I realized she was paying attention.
Beach volleyball demanded the same kind of attention.
The best players weren’t always the strongest.
They were the ones who noticed.
The direction of the breeze.
The hesitation in a server’s routine.
A partner whose confidence was slipping away.
A defender cheating toward the line.
Tiny details became opportunities.
I began carrying that habit everywhere.
One afternoon after league play, I sat under a blue canopy with a group of older players while they traded stories from tournaments in the late 1980s.
One talked about driving all night just to make an early morning qualifier.
Another remembered when prize money barely covered the cost of gas.
Someone laughed about using borrowed nets because the tournament director forgot half the equipment.
Nobody complained.
They smiled through every story.
Looking back, I think that was because they weren’t remembering victories.
They were remembering belonging.
There was something beautiful about a sport where everyone seemed to know someone who knew someone else.
Beach volleyball wasn’t just competition.
It was a community held together by stories.
The more weekends I spent on the sand, the more familiar faces became.
Parents waved.
Tournament directors remembered my name.
Kids asked if they could pepper with me while waiting for their matches.
Those small moments mattered more than I realized.
They were signs that I was becoming part of something larger than myself.
One windy afternoon I lost another tournament.
It wasn’t close.
Our opponents served aggressively, communicated constantly, and never looked rattled.
My partner kicked the sand after match point.
“I hate losing.”
“So do I,” I admitted.
An older woman who had been keeping score folded her chair and smiled at us.
“You know what I saw?”
I shrugged.
“You trusted each other.”
Neither of us answered.
“You can’t teach that overnight,” she continued. “The wins will come. Don’t lose the harder thing while chasing the easier one.”
For the rest of the drive home, I thought about what she had said.
Winning felt obvious.
Trust felt invisible.
Yet every player I admired seemed to value trust first.
Maybe that was why they stayed partners for years.
Maybe that was why people still spoke their names decades later.
At dinner that evening, my grandmother listened while I described the match.
When I finished, she set down her fork.
“Did you play with integrity?”
“I think so.”
“Did you encourage your partner?”
“Yes.”
“Did you learn something?”
“I did.”
She smiled.
“Then today wasn’t a loss.”
That answer frustrated me at seventeen.
At twenty-four, it became one of the principles I tried to live by.
Beach volleyball never promised fairness.
Sometimes the wind changed at exactly the wrong moment.
Sometimes a net cord turned a perfect serve into an ace.
Sometimes the better team lost.
The beach accepted all of it without apology.
So eventually, I learned to do the same.
I couldn’t control the tide.
I couldn’t control the weather.
I couldn’t control what strangers assumed about me before introducing themselves.
What I could control was how I treated my partner, how honestly I competed, and whether I returned the next weekend ready to learn again.
Somewhere between those long Saturdays and the endless rhythm of the waves, volleyball stopped being something I played.
It became the place where I practiced becoming the person I hoped I would be.
Looking back now, I think that’s why the beach stayed with me.
Not because it taught me how to win.
Because it taught me how to keep showing up—even when the wind wasn’t blowing in my favor.
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