Back with the Varsity

So yesterday I got an email from my buddy Rich letting me know he recently changed jobs.  Ironically I had sent an email to his old work address a couple weeks ago and got a bounce so I was wondering what was going on.

Rich (on left) has been a good friend of mine that I met early on in my hard core volleyball days.  He was a member on a team I was recruited for back in the early-mid 90’s.  I recall how Rich and I would pepper the volleyball warming up. He loved when I would hit hard at him so he could try to dig it up, which he was pretty adept at.  For whatever reason from that time on we were friends and regular volleyball partners.  We were both lefties so it made for an interesting combo on the court.

Despite being close in height (I am a little taller), we had two very different roles on the court.  I was more the enforcer, preferring to just hit the ball hard, serve the ball hard with little else going through my head.  Rich was a far better defensive player, quicker, more cerebral and adept at mixing in power with finesse.  He also had a unique ability to bump set me just right, allowing me to take good rips at a ball more often than not.

Rich has a very dry but incredibly quick and witty sense of humor that I found endlessly entertaining.  He is responsible for most of the volleyball opponent nicknames I have listed here .  He also has been a huge part of the massive volleyball tip list I have created over the last decade or so.

We had a super successful run as vball doubles partners for two or three years, the highlight of which was our epic win in the 1999 Pottstown Rumble where we outlasted over 120 other teams to win our division.

Rich and I also had a stint as work out partners when I was in my beefy creatine days.  Once a week he would come over to my townhouse in Wernersville where we would push big weight in my finished basement while listening to a CD I burned with some of our favorite “pump you up” music. (anyone remember Ramstein?) After working out we would celebrate by pigging out, typically on meatball sandwiches.

Since I moved to Florida, Rich and I have fallen out of touch quite a bit.  Since I relocated he has married, bought a house, got a job in the IT industry and now has two children which keep him very, very busy.  It is a big change from the Rich I knew but a good one in the big picture.

So anyway he and I had an email exchange where we updated each other on the status of our lives currently.  Despite a lack of recent communication I had no problem jumping right into sharing personal feelings and information with Rich.  He was and always will be one of the few people in a very small circle of mine that I am comfortable sharing that sort of stuff with.

Rich has a unique ability to make me laugh out loud, often, a rare thing.

I handed out an invitation for him to come visit with the family anytime he chooses, I’d love to be able to  hang out with him again.  Who knows, we could maybe even find our way back onto a volleyball court somehow…