When I think about the curious relationships between clubs and their affiliated schools, I think about this painting:
It’s a painting of Frankish King, Clovis I being baptised into Roman Christianity circa 493 AD. Clovis I was a Merovigian king who united the Franks under one kingdom that would become modern France. At this time the Roman Catholic Church was in a weak position that had been deteriorating since the Fall of Rome. Having a secular champion like Clovis I and a country like France, would not only ensure its survival but establish its dominant power and influence over Western Europe.
And so a deal was done, and the heathens of Gaul were all converted to Roman Christianity. It was the start of that unusual (and often destructive) marriage between church and state that came to rule medieval society for the next few hundred years. Thank heavens a bunch of freemasons founded the USA and decided it was a good idea to separate these institutions for good!
For mutual survival and prosperity, clubs and school programmes often forge similar relationships. Clubs get a supply of enthusiastic kids for their junior programmes, who will hopefully become their future stars. Schools get their kids more quality coaching and experience playing in tougher competitions.
In SA there’s also that other little regulation that requires players to be registered to a club to be eligible for selection in the state teams. Clubs also can’t compete in state league without both men’s and women’s teams and boys and girls junior teams. And it used to be the case that to compete in junior league, a team had to belong to one of the clubs. Behind nearly every great AVSC school from SA stands a great club. And Vice versa. They really need each other.
Some famous couples
I can’t be 100% sure of the status of all these affiliations, but at some point in SA we had:
- Unley High School & Austral Volleyball Club
- Brighton Secondary School & Holdfast Bay Volleyball Club (Previous spouses include Austral, Campbelltown Cheetahs/Henley Hawks & USC Lion. You could almost call Brighton the “Elizabeth Taylor” of Volleyball Schools)
- Heathfield High School and Mt Lofty Volleyball Club
- Rostrevor College & Norwood Volleyball Club (Since separated)
- Aberfoyle Park & South Adelaide Volleyball Club
According to the Melbourne Falcons website, they have affilations with:
- Billanook College
- Upwey High School
- Luther College
- Kew High School
- Eltham High School
[a polyamorous relationship it would seem from our more cosmopolitan neighbours] No bloody wonder they’re all so strong!
I’m also guessing Wonthaggi has some sort of affiliation with Heidelberg. Or at least used to. I’m not 100% sure, but I’m sure Devo will correct me if I’m wrong!
Clubs are from Mars, Schools are from Venus
How do these relationships function well? It’s simple really. Clubs need the schools to provide them with their best players, and schools need clubs to support them in their campaigns, namely AVSC. Like any other relationship, this can be hard work, and things won’t work out if either side doesn’t live up to it’s end of the bargain.
Star Couples Part 1: Rostrevor College and Norwood Bears
By the time I was old enough to start playing junior volleyball (circa 1997), my local club Campbelltown Cheetahs had packed up and moved to the other side of the city and become Henley Hawks. North Adelaide had moved to Norwood to access a junior base in the suburbs and renamed themselves Norwood bears.
Norwood’s affiliated school was Rostrevor College. It was a golden age for both; Rostrevor had the brilliant Adam Maskell and a group of talented kids that would all make the state sides and go on to be Junior and Intermediate Honours campions and win silver medals in U17s and Open Honours [they lost OHB to possibly the greatest school’s cup team ever fielded]. Norwood was on the way up too. They had Andy Hunter, Jonathan Hague and Jason Sydoryn. Mark Lebedew would join them soon to spearhead their AVL aspirations as coach.
With Norwood investing so much into Rostrevor, it was hard for me to get good opportunities to play. I wasn’t very good to begin with, but there were certainly Rostrevor players at a similar standard getting far better opportunities. So by the time I was 18, I packed up and moved to the club I idolised as a child – the Cheetahs, who by this time were the Henley Hawks. Despite all this, I really liked those guys from Rostrevor. I’m still quite close to a couple of them to this day. But the truth remains, affiliations between clubs and schools can really marginalise junior players who do “fit in”. In my case, I couldn’t get into the team I wanted. In some case, you can’t even get into the programme.
As the years went on, the relationship didn’t seem to be as strong. Relationships are hard work and you both have to put in. Norwood did get some of Rostrevor’s best playing for them – Adam Maskell, Travis Moran, Nik West, Tom West, Matt Hunt, Mark Winter, Victor Fule, Julian Roeger etc. Most of them weren’t long term since they either made the national team or lost interest. There were many teriffic Rostrevor players that never played for Norwood at all at the State League level.
Norwood didn’t seem to be giving Rostrevor enough support. Their junior league teams were more and less just Rostrevor teams, coached by Glen Urbani or Rostrevor alumni. Any affiliation these coaches had with Norwood were purely coincidental. I never saw Norwood provide coaches for their AVSC teams (except the guys that were from Rostrevor). Rostrevor were pretty much just playing under the Norwood name so they could compete in Junior League.
At this point, if you lived in the eastern suburbs and didn’t go to Rostrevor, there was no way you could play junior league for them. There would have been seasons where Norwood didn’t field a junior girls team either. They would have technically been ineligible to stay in State league. But with only 6 clubs left in SA, it probably wasn’t a good idea to kick them out.
Then, a couple of years ago, VSA made it possible for schools to enter teams in junior league without an affiliated club. Rostrevor, with its own very capable coaching resources struck out on its own, leaving Norwood without any juniors.
To its credit, Norwood started its junior programme again from scratch. The kids come from schools in the local area like Marryatville Primary, and maybe Marryatville High. I think a lot of this can be credited to a bunch of Renmark ex-pats who moved to Adelaide and joined Norwood. They have taken the club in exciting new directions. They’re in a very similar position to where Hawks was when I started coaching there years ago. The kids are young and many still in primary school. It’ll take years for them to bear fruit, but lets be hopeful.
Norwood still has Tom West playing for them. Nik West plays sometimes when he’s not overseas playing for European clubs. Adam Maskell and Travis Moran aren’t exclusively involved with Norwood anymore, if they are at all. Rostrevor’s latest stars Harrison Peacock and Sam White have chosen to play for Mt. Lofty. All in all, both Norwood and Rostrevor have moved on and it’s worked out ok.
Since we all love reading about star couples, we’ll take a look at another one from SA tomorrow.
