I’ve been playing volleyball competitively since I was about 13. I played in college and then played club ball on an off since I graduated. A few years back when Perceptive Software got big enough to participate in the Kansas City Corporate Challenge, I jumped all over it. We had a couple of really talented guys, including one of my good friends from school that I had recruited to come work there.

It was a lot of fun, although since PSI was a smaller company, our very solid team wasn’t challenged very much, rolling through the G and F divisions pretty easily.

Smash cut to the two years I spent at SunBridge Capital. No volleyball. No Corporate Challenge. I got fat(ter). I tried to stay in shape. I did. I was round.

Smash cut to 3 months ago. One of the first things that I did was check to make sure that I started before the March 13 cutoff date that would allow me to play in the Corporate Challenge with Cerner, an A-division team, pitting me against some of my good friends at Sprint and some of the best volleyball players in Kansas City.

So for the past several weeks, I’ve been practicing with my new team at my new company. My knees are not happy. The amount of weight that they have to support as I jump around on the court over and over again is daunting. So the ice has come out each night to soothe the aches. Stairs aren’t very fun.

But my knees could be saved a lot of pain if I would just lose 10, 20 or 50 pounds. I don’t want to have surgery on both my knees like my dad just went through (one last fall and one a couple weeks ago). But man, do I love playing volleyball. The time off in between volleyball stints has been killing me. I really love the game and wish I could play more than just during Corporate Challenge.

Now, if my knees would just cooperate…