In St. Mary’s Junior High for Ladies, sports were a complicated topic. The school strived to educate "proper ladies", and different people had different opinions about whether a "lady" had any need for something sweaty and competitive like sports. In particular, many of the older staff often voiced their displeasure on this topic.
Nonetheless, in the world outside, women's sports have been becoming more and more popular. Not only professionally, but also among kids and teens.
As such, it became common to expect schools to provide support for such activities. In fact, for some parents, it was a deal breaker when a school didn’t have any sports clubs.
To not lose too many “customers”, the school had no choice but to adapt. So, about two decades ago, St. Mary’s started supporting sports clubs. There was some internal strife among the education staff on the topic, and to this day there were some teachers who didn’t look favorably on sports activities. But fortunately, most of the fraction was gone by now.
And so, St. Mary’s adopted sports and made them available for those who wanted to partake in them. However, the school had relatively fewer students than the average school, and only a portion of them were interested in sports in the first place. This naturally led to a limited number of club options.
Soccer and basketball were the two most popular sports among teens these days, but these two didn’t appeal to girls as much as they did to boys. As such, though there were some attempts to form such clubs in the past, these projects never kicked off because they failed to attract enough students.
In the end, most of the girls who joined sports clubs went for track and field. It was a sport with the least direct confrontation between competitors, and it also offered a broad variety of activities so it was easier to find something attractive there.
Nonetheless, there was one ball game that managed to become relatively popular among the girls: volleyball. Out of all the ball games, this was the only one that managed to get a club in St Mary’s.
Despite its humble beginnings, this club quickly made a name for itself at the regionals. The school invested in a proper female coach for the club, and the results spoke for themselves.
Alas, with the school being so small, it didn’t have a stable influx of talent every year. As a result, the team had some years in which it underperformed greatly.
The coach noticed this concerning trend and came up with an unusual solution. She requested the school to permit students to attend multiple sports clubs at the same time if they so desired. This was rather unorthodox compared to how things operated in other schools, but it made a lot of sense.
At the middle school level, athletic talent was sometimes more important than specialized practice. For example, a talented girl from the track and field club, who already trained hard on a regular basis, could easily outshine many members of the volleyball club at their own game. Somebody like that, who already had a great athletic affinity, might need far less volleyball training than others in order to perform well at the regionals.
This was simply a matter of having undeveloped bodies. Almost nobody in the volleyball club went through enough years of specialized training to be considered a "volleyball specialist". Their bodies hadn’t yet rebuilt themselves to specialize in the sport, therefore anybody who was athletic enough had a chance to do well.
In fact, Fiona’s success in so many sports was largely thanks to this factor. Her intense regular training regime built up the core of her body in such a way that allowed her to perform well in anything.
However, she was like a jack of all trades and a master of none. Some coaches had already warned her that dividing her focus between so many sports would eventually come back to bite her.
No matter how much professional coaching she keeps receiving, at some point, it won't be enough anymore. In the end, specialization was bound to beat generalization. Those who dedicated themselves wholly to a single craft were bound to stand at the top of the highest level of competition.
And indeed, Fiona had already started feeling the impact of this in recent years.
For example, she used to practice judo at one point in time. Like in every other field, she showed much promise at first.
At first, she performed well in competitions. Alas, her glory was short-lived. Soon enough, she started running into opponents who practiced judo far more religiously than her.
These girls were often bigger and physically stronger than Fiona, and they practiced judo that much more. At some point, it felt like an impassable wall formed between Fiona and the top of the competition for her age. She could no longer stay near the top as a generalist.
Of course, she might have had a chance if she chose to dedicate herself wholly to the craft, but focusing on judo alone did not interest her. And so, Fiona quit competitive judo in favor of focusing on other sports.
This was just the first field she had to quit due to not being a specialist. In time, more and more fields will prove themselves too difficult to compete in.
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In fact, last year, Fiona had already lost the tennis regionals to another girl. Unlike Fiona, her opponent was a tennis purist and the daughter of a pro player to boot.
As frustrating as it was, developments like that were just a matter of time. Eventually, the entire image of “the Landberht Princess who excels in many sports” will become forgotten history.
However, such heavy topics were still in the far future. For now, Fiona was still a middle schooler and the majority of her competition was half-baked as athletes.
So, using similar reasoning, the volleyball coach at St. Mary’s managed to convince the principal that the volleyball club should be allowed to recruit members from other clubs. Students who showed excellent athletic ability were bound to be an asset in competitive games and help the team maintain its prestige in the region in a more consistent manner.
On paper, these borrowed students still “belonged to one club”, so to speak. The main club was the one they had the most obligation to while the volleyball club had secondary priority. These students were welcome to join practice but it was not strictly demanded of them on a regular basis.
But, this was just the formal definition on paper. In practice, the volleyball coach coaxed many students into regularly joining the volleyball club in their practice. Fiona and Karen were also two victims of the woman's schemes.
And so, today as well, Fiona and Karen found themselves heading to volleyball practice early in the morning.
Just to be clear, this was not something Fiona signed up for of her own volition. She always found team sports difficult to compete in because achieving victory relied on many factors that were outside of her direct control.
There was nothing Fiona hated more than being unable to fully control her own fate. Whenever she lost a game, she wanted it to happen on her own terms. It had to be a situation where she played to the utmost of her ability and that simply proved insufficient.
As such, track and field, swimming, tennis, piano, and chess were the fields she enjoyed the most. She was aware of the prestige behind the school’s volleyball club but she had absolutely no interest in joining it.
But, in time, her reputation made things difficult for her. The media fawned over the "Landberht Princes", so Fiona had no chance of escaping the attention of the volleyball coach.
And so, the foxy woman pulled some strings to recruit Fiona into the club. Truly, it was a rather tiresome experience.
At first, Fiona refused the call. Unfortunately, it did not end at that. The school spoke with her multiple times, effectively pleading with her to do it "for the sake of the school".
However, with how packed Fiona's schedule already was at the time, she insisted on turning them down time and again. But, they persisted, annoyingly so. It felt like the volleyball coach had no intention of giving up for as long as she was alive.
In fact, the woman went as far as to conceive a story about how that year's volleyball club was "lacking in talent" and “had little to no chance at the regionals”. It was debatable whether that was truly the case, but she was the coach so the school had to take her at her word. Truly, a shrewd woman.
The worst part was how genuinely passionate the woman was about all of this. She used to be a professional volleyball player and her actions radiated just how much she loved the sport even now. So, from her perspective, she just trying to find talent to nurture for her beloved sport.
Truth be told, the woman's passion nearly swayed Fiona more than a few times. She came but a few steps away from falling into that well-crafted trap.
Nonetheless, Fiona always stood her ground in the end. She simply was not interested in a team sport, and her schedule was already too packed to allow any distractions.
Therefore, for a long time, Fiona had been deflecting the invitation. She had plenty of other important matters to take care of, so she had no interest in increasing her load.
In particular, as it was her first year of middle school, Fiona was greatly anticipating a certain chess match at the regionals. She was hoping to hold an official rematch with Yuel Fermond, provided the man’s skill did not rust to the point he would be eliminated at the prelim.
This was a real concern. After all, Yuel performed poorly a year prior, getting eliminated by Cato before ever reaching Fiona at the finals. It was quite a lamentable matter, considering this was the man who somehow triumphed over Fiona a year prior.
After seeing Yuel’s poor performance against Cato, Fiona could not help but wonder whether she misjudged the man’s skill level. Perhaps his victory against Fiona was naught more than a fluke, a one-in-a-million chance.
Yet, every time Fiona reviewed that match, a shudder ran through her. It was not like she had never faced defeat before in her life, but that one defeat, in particular, etched itself into her memory. She simply could not forget about it, no matter how much time had passed.
There was something vile about that match in particular, something that rubbed Fiona the wrong way up to this day. It felt as if Fiona lost herself during that battle. Perhaps she did not even lose to Yuel Fermond at all that day. Rather, she lost against herself.
That was why she simply could not let go of that match. On that day, Yuel Fermond exposed a glaring weakness that Fiona had in chess, and he used that one weakness to strike her down.
Therefore, Fiona wished for a proper rematch ever since. She practiced hard since that day, learning all manners of less conventional plays for the sake of being prepared for any situation. Today, she could confidently claim that she was more resilient than ever to surprising complications.
Nonetheless, to properly close the book on this whole arc, Fiona desired to play against Yuel Fermond one more time and to properly defeat him. Only then, she will finally be able to move on.
And so, Fiona anticipated this one rematch during her first year of middle school… but it never came. Yuel Fermond did not show up for the regionals that year.
Frankly, Fiona was not sure what to make of it. Did Yuel quit chess? Or, did he simply miss this one tournament for some reason? Will she ever get her much-desired rematch…?
Truth be told, Fiona was itching to head out and confront the man directly on the topic. But, at the same time, she felt as if this might be a sign to finally let go. With how busy her schedule was, it should be easy enough to lose herself in a lot of other activities and eventually forget about this topic entirely.
Nonetheless, every now and then, Fiend still found herself wondering why Yuel Fermond did not show up to the tournament. But, every time the question popped up, she made it into a policy to perish the thought and focus on the other many activities of her life.
But then, one day, the devil showed up and dragged Fiona back into this bottomless swamp…