Not making the volleyball team my senior year was embarrassing. There’s no way to soften that. Senior year is supposed to be when things finally click and when all the time and effort actually lead to something; instead, I was cut.

The worst part wasn’t just the decision itself. It was everything surrounding it. Walking past people who had made it and acting like I didn’t care when I obviously did. I kept replaying tryouts in my head, thinking I could somehow change the outcome after the fact. It wasn’t just a “that sucks” moment—it was the kind of failure that makes you question your capability a little more than you had expected.

At a place like LFHS, failure feels heavier than it should. It feels as if there is a constant implicit pressure to be doing everything right, whether it may be making the team, getting the grade, or being accepted to the school. People mostly share their success, creating an illusion where everyone is always moving forward, so when you don’t, it feels like you’re the only one falling behind.

Though I’ve started to realize that failure is more important than success, it breaks that misconception.

Success is easy to accept. You don’t question it, you just move on. If you make the team, you assume you deserve it. If you get the grade, you assume you earned it. If you get into your dream school, you think you have achieved it all. While that might be true, success doesn’t force you to look any deeper. It doesn’t make you reflect. It just confirms what you already wanted to believe.

Failure does the opposite.

When you fail, you don’t get that automatic sense of validation. You’re left sitting with questions instead of answers. Why didn’t it work? Was I good enough? Did I do enough? These questions aren’t comfortable, but they’re real. They force you to think in a way success never does.

Not making the volleyball team made me doubt my ability, though it made me realize how much of my confidence was tied to outcomes. I didn’t just want to play, I wanted it to prove something about me. When that didn’t happen, it felt like I lost more than just a spot on a roster.

That’s why failure matters. It exposes what success can hide.

It shows you how much you rely on the peripheral aspects of life: teams, grades, and recognition, secure in yourself. Once those things are gone, you’re forced to figure out what is actually left. That process isn’t quick, and it definitely isn’t easy, but it’s where the most growth happens.

Failure teaches you something that success rarely does: resilience that isn’t based on things going your way. It’s easy to feel confident when everything is working out. It’s a lot harder to rebuild that confidence when it isn’t.

For a while, I didn’t see anything good in what happened. I saw it as something I wanted to forget. That’s important to say, because failure doesn’t immediately feel meaningful; it just feels frustrating and disappointing.

It takes time before you can even start to reflect on it in a productive way. Over time, I started to understand that not making the team didn’t erase the work I had put in or the player I had been. It was one outcome, not a definition. Learning to separate those two things is something success has never forced me to do.

LFHS puts substantial weight on visible achievements, but it doesn’t really teach you how to handle moments when things don’t go as planned. Those moments are inevitable. That’s why failure ends up being more valuable; it prepares you for something real that actually lasts beyond a single outcome.

I’m not going to pretend that I am glad it happened. I would’ve rather made the team. Though now, looking back, I’ve spent more time reflecting on that failure than I ever have on something that went my way.

Success feels good at the moment, but it’s temporary. Failure stays with you—because of that, it changes you more.

In the long run, that matters a lot more than another win.