It was my first year of high school and I wanted to play a sport in the fall. Having played volleyball in middle school, and enjoying it thoroughly, I decided to sign up to tryout for the Arrowhead High School volleyball team.

On the first day of tryouts, I noticed the associate principal, Mrs. Paradowski, was the coach. I immediately thought it was going to be a very strict team, but luckily I was wrong.  

Mrs. Paradowski was an incredible coach and an even better person. She can always find the good in any situation and is always in an amazing mood. This does not mean however that she can’t be strict. To be a good coach and a good principal at the same time must be incredibly hard, and Mrs. Paradowski does it perfectly.

When we started our first day of practice, nobody knew how the season would go or if it would be good or bad to have Mrs. Paradowski as a coach. Starting off the first day, we introduced ourselves to each other and started to separate into groups of passers and spikers. I chose to go into the spikers. Our entire team except for two people wanted to be spikers so Mrs. Paradowski encouraged me and a teammate to go into the passer group to even the amount out a little bit. This turned out to be what was best for me as a player, because I ended up being one of the main passers for the whole season. This showed me that I needed to be open to different things and Mrs. Paradowski opened me up to that.

About halfway through the season Mrs. Paradowski pulled me aside and said, “You have been doing great recently and the JV coach wants you to start practicing with them instead of the freshmen.”

I was filled with joy and excitement for what was next. After practicing with JV for a couple of weeks, Mrs. Paradowski and the JV coach pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to move up to JV for games as well as practice.

I was very happy with the offer but I did not want to leave Mrs. Paradowski as a coach. By this time the season was almost over and I knew by playing with JV would make me a better player so I accepted the offer. Mrs. Paradowski was happy for me but was not happy she was losing me as a player.

Mrs. Paradowski is now my favorite administrator at Arrowhead, because she taught me how to be open to change and gave me the best season of a sport I have ever had. Although I have stopped playing volleyball, I still thank Mrs. Paradowski for coaching me and making every day exciting and enjoyable. I am glad I chose to play volleyball in high school because it was an experience I will always remember.