Eastside High standout Cameron Meadows signs to play volleyball for SMC

TAYLORS - Susan Meadows coached Eastside High School in a volleyball match on Oct. 1, 1997. Her daughter, Cameron, was born the next day.

It wasn't long before Cameron began hanging around the Eastside gymnasium.

"I have a picture of her laying on the gym floor. She must have been a month old," said Susan Meadows, Eastside's volleyball coach for the past 28 years, with another 16 as softball coach mixed in.

"Cameron grew up on the volleyball court and on the softball field. She came to practice every day. I can remember times when she fell asleep at matches behind the bench, covered up in volleyball bags. Most of our memories are on the volleyball court, whether it's playing club volleyball, or Eastside volleyball or rec. volleyball. Pretty much everything there's a volleyball involved.

"And Eastside High School. She's been a part of Eastside High School for 18 years."

On Wednesday, Eastside held its signing ceremony in that same gym. Twenty-one senior student-athletes were recognized for taking their athletic talents to the next level, covering 10 sports and 14 colleges.

Cameron Meadows was among the signees, having accepted a scholarship to play volleyball at Spartanburg Methodist College.

It's always a special day for parents, families and coaches, and both Susan Meadows and her husband, Rossi, a football coach for 37 years, have been through it many times, having seen numerous players they've coached sign scholarships.

But it's a little different when it's your own.

"It lets us leave a little money on the table to pay for some bread with," Rossi Meadows said with a smile.

For this signee, he had the experience of being the parent.

"A lot of days, a lot of weekends spent in a gym someplace, whether it's in Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina," he said. "A lot of hard work paying off."

Rossi Meadows said there was a time when they used to wonder whether Cameron would play volleyball or softball down the road. There was never much doubt that she would follow in the family business of coaching.

"I used to run around here when I was little and we'd play school, and I'd always be the teacher or the principal. I was never the student," Cameron said.

"When I was little, I used to walk around with a little clipboard on the sideline at volleyball games, like I was coaching or something, like I knew what I was doing. I've kind of known for a while that that's what I wanted to do."

Cameron said she plans to major in education, and she'd like to teach social studies, although she's uncertain about whether she'd like to do so at the elementary or high school level.

"Little kids are a little bit easier to deal with," she said with a laugh. "I know about high school kids. I've been around them all my life."

Cameron also has gotten a jump on her coaching career. She's been helping her mother coach an 11-and-under team.

"Sometimes she has a little more patience than I do with them," Susan Meadows said. "I get a little aggravated after I've told them over and over and over and over."

"I've learned a lot," said Cameron. "Now I know why I get yelled at a lot, because I find myself looking at some of the kids and I'm like, 'Why are you doing this?' "

Then again, she's getting used to strange being the norm, never more so than as her time in high school winds down.

"It's kind of weird," Cameron said. "I've always seen everybody else sign, and now I'm the one signing. There's no other senior above me.

"It's weird that Eastside's over. I've been here my whole life. I was born into Eastside volleyball, and now I'm like, 'There's no more practices that I sit and watch and practice in and no more games to play,' and I'm like, 'Now I have to come back to watch.' "

At least a call home will get her up to speed.

Article by Greenville News

bcastell@greenvillenews.com