written by Diana Pintus/ translated by Francesco Carboni
Nadia Bala is 28 years old, she is from Rovigo, she has been playing volley since she was very young, and she always has loved this sport. “Volley for me means passion, friendship, challenges and being healthy. I could use the same adjectives and the same adjectives to express what sitting volley is for me as well “.
This emotions, tells Nadia “become part of you when you start playing. I cannot imagine my life without volley, without sitting volley though. This is why I believe that talking about this sport is extremely important. All the people with a physical disability who can control their chest muscles can play. And this is a sport that you may not like – she admits – but it is still worthy to try, at least once in a life”.
With her association Vinci l’Epilessia ( Win the Epilepsy) she created the Fair Play award one year ago, an award to transmit her main value and the whole meaning of sport. As an ex referee (she has been a referee from 2011 until her first seizure), as an athlete and as a person: respect. “Respect for me does not mean just following the rules, but to love any other as a human being, and respect him as a person. In sitting volley there is an habit I love: when we go greeting the opposing team, before the match, we exchange a gift, a small thing, it may be pins or chocolate, or whatever. This is what respect mean for me: we play the best as we can, but we give always respect to the opponent inside and outside the game field”. To respect the opponent, as Nadia says, also means to be able to lose: ” I love winning, but a true athlete can respect the others even when he have lost. An athlete take a loss as a weapon to train harder and try again next time, if you look for excuses it means you are not a good athlete”.
Nadia leads the only sitting volley team in Veneto with her association Vinci l’Epilessia, supported by the club Qui Sport Trecenta. The association was born in a day that is, for Nadia, very important to remember: May 1 2014, exactly one year after the sudden change of direction taken by her life, May 1, 2013.
“I had no symptoms, at all. I started with three seizures while I was eating. The following year has been a very hard one , I had to face physical and psychological injuries. Luckily I had a big support from my family and the people who loved me. It was a year of hospitals and beds, a year of hell. I stayed at home, most of the time. When I created the association I did it for myself and for all the other disabled people in my same conditions. It was a message: for me and for the others: get out! This is your life and you have to live it. Here and now! Then, in the last three months of that terrible year, a year in which I kept watching volley on tv, I started to go back to the gym to meet my friends, and I refused to believe and accept I could never play again. With a friend of mine and the people with whom, later, I would create the association I said: I have to change my life, I have to come back and play, how would it be possible? And we started with tsitting volley. That is why the symbol of my association is a ball to play volley with a purple bow. “
In the same year, 2014, Nadia was nominated by the Italian Volleyball Federation (FiPAV) Provincial Commissioner of sitting volleyball for the province of Rovigo, and a year later, Friday April 17 2015 she received her first call in the National team: “it was amazing. I felt like it was a dream. When you play volley for many years and you keep watching the games on TV, you don’t think you will get there one day, especially not as a paralympic athlete. Of course you never know, but if you had told me in 2013: Nadia in 3 years you’ll play in the sitting volley national team, I would not bet a coin on it. “
But it happened, and as in Nadia’s life dates and numbers are very important, it is a 17 again to mark a new turning point in her new life: “not even an year later, March 17 2016, I went to play the Paralympic qualifying tournament, which took place from march 17 to March 25, in China. ” A tournament in which Nadia’s team have played very well: “We brought home the first historic victory of the italian sitting volley team , because the males had not won any games in the European championship which had taken place before. One day I will be able to say: I was there, I was there at the first historic victory, these are big satisfactions. Mostly for a volley player like me who understands the true meaning of this sport, who loves volley. “
Nadia is not selfish in giving merits: “Going to China was not only about us athletes. Our coach, Guido Pasciari, helped us in many ways, and our team manager Roberto Centini as well. All they have done, it was for us. We were in China, and the manager had to watch over 16 people in a foreign country, such as China, so far away from Italy, 24 hours a day. The coach has been working for a year with athletes coming from all over Italy, with various disabilities, and yes, some of them had played volley before but … Look at me for example. I was a volley player even before, but I had to adapt volley to my disability. It’s not easy. It takes a great ability to motivate people. ”
Nadia is thankful to everybody. The Italian Paralympic Committee and its president Luca Pancalli, the Fipav, particularly President Magri and the sitting volleyball counselor Cecchi, The teammates, the technical sponsor, the Erreà: “From the technical sponsor we goteverything. They even gave us the clothes to wear during the matches. They were amazing, we looked gorgeous wearing that. We were the most stylish, all other countries were coming to watch us playing because we were looking good. ”
Nadia is not afraid to admit she is conceited: “Luckily I am, again. And I have to say luckily, definitely. Before I started having the attacks I was conceited. I was fond of gorgeous dresses and high heels, you should see how many dresses and skirts I have at home. At the beginning I had the idea I could never wear them again, I would never look good again. This thing was murdering me. Today when I look myself in the mirror I do not see the wheelchair thinking: my life is over, I am ugly, that’s it. Now I feel good looking again, and that vanity brought me happiness back.
But now Nadia is different: she has the sun on her face.
“I have begun to live and to see life in a different way. It’s like when you’re standing up and you see the sky in a way, and then, when you sit down you see it in another way, but it is still the same sky, just from a different perspective. I enjoy life, I enjoy it in a different perspective, more sunny. When you’re standing you don’t have the sun on you, because obviously you look in front of you. “When you’re sitting on the ground or you’re sitting in a wheelchair, you’ve got the sun in your face, because you look up to the standing people.The way I am living the life right now is a bit more sunny, because I’m enjoying life, as it is.
In the past I was always thinking about problems, I saw problems in anything. We all do it. Now I always smile, for everything, so that people say to me “are you always laughing?” Yes, I am, but it is not a fake smile, it is a real smile. After all I’ve been through I constantly repeat to myself: life is beautiful, I am lucky. Despite all the pills I have to take in a day, despite doctors and hospitals, despite everything else, I’m lucky because I can do the sport that I love, that I love more than anything, I am near the people I love, I am blessed by the sun. If I could see a bit of sun through my shadows before, now I have the sun on my face”.