COACHING YOUNG LEAPERS*

By Allan Roy Andrews

Young females dig, bump, set, spike,
Learning a child’s game,
Yearning to leap to womanly skills.

I enmesh their aerial pursuit,
Forge their passionate leaps
At a white sphere above a net;

I deny too-early competition,
Require they control selfish steps,
Demand shared and arduous hustling.

But they leap too quickly
To ardor without instruction;
They grow fat with child

And hustle into motherhood,
Wearing their talent below their breasts
With the roundness of a volleyball.

They serve in carpeted courts
Without coaching, without scoreboards
Or applause, longing to leap once more.

*Originally published in Aethlon:  The Journal of Sport Literature, Vol. X, No. 2, Spring, 1993, page 76