No place like home

Note: The Kent State volleyball team competed in a tournament at Towson University this past weekend, providing senior outside hitter Tinuke Aderemi-Ibitola with an opportunity to play near her hometown of Ellicott City, Md.

As the long 6-hour drive down Towson began, I started to play ridiculously cliché songs on my iPod like, ‘Coming Home’ by Diddy, while I contemplated in my head if this is how LeBron felt returning to play in Cleveland (obviously not, but I still like to think me and him have a connection now).

It was hard for me to contain my excitement and contain the huge smile on my face to a gentle smirk, so I decided to fall asleep. We arrived at a hotel in Timonium, just 25 minutes away from my house, I couldn’t wait for the next day to play and see all of my family and friends.

Throughout the three games over the weekend, I would look up in the stands to see so many familiar faces. My parents, older brother and sister, high school volleyball coach, my uncle, parents of old teammates I played club with, random high school classmates, all came up to watch us play. It was unfortunate that our games ended in a loss, but you can’t stay mad for long when you walk out of the locker room and your brother is standing there with a half-deflated smiley face balloon connected to boxes of edible arrangements.

After all the matches were over, I got the rare opportunity, playing so close to home, to bring the team to the my house to eat dinner. After a short drive down to Ellicott City, I stepped out of the bus with an image of my father standing outside the front door, with the biggest smile I had ever seen, clapping, welcoming us home. We all walked through the house while some of my teammates stopped to stare at random baby pictures and old family photos, finally ending the tour in the backyard where we decided to play a game of ‘add on.’ The game ended pretty suddenly as Heather almost (accidentally) sat on a baby bunny in the heat of the game.

Luckily, the food arrived shortly after as silence fell across the backyard are we all scarfed down half chickens, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, cinnamon apples, cookies, brownies, until we couldn’t eat anymore. Soon after, it was time to head back to Kent. A few hugs and goodbyes later and we were off.