I was pleasantly surprised to get a comment from Jamie Tester, one of my favourite coaches out there. A great coach who I have yet to beat, and just one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He used to run the programme at Hallett Cove High where he coached this fantastic Open Girls team that my Willunga Open Girls played several times and couldn’t beat. I think they ended up winning gold or silver at AVSC that year. They stick out in my memory because they were one of the few teams that always passed the first ball on their forearms making their reception and defense quite strong. Their defensive positioning was also very good making it hard to beat.
A couple of years ago he moved over to Brighton and coached their U16 Boys Honours team, which included Nic Rodger and Michael McEwen. I was Coaching Chris Little’s Willunga U16 boys, and we had to play them for an honours spot at State School’s cup. It was a very late game that went to 5 sets. We were both surprised it went that close. Originally we thought Brighton would just win easily, and given the time of the match (i think it started at 10 in the evening and we had both had long days), considered forfeiting it and giving both teams some rest. My boys had other ideas and it turned out to be a memorable game to say the least. We were up 2 sets to 1 and I thought it was going to be a time limit game and was hoping to run down the clock. Unfortunately I was wrong and they took control of the game by slowing it down. In the end i don’t think my boys had played a 5-set match before so Brighton had bit of an advantage over us playing a long match like that.
Jamie also has a couple of kids who are terrific players. His daughter Edie played in Brighton’s silver medal winning Open Honours Girls team last year at AVSC. His son Luke was one one the most versatile players I have seen play, and played in arguably the greatest Open Honours Boys team ever. But that is a story for another day!
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Jamie Tester
G’day Huy
Your passion for this great game comes through the screen. I suspect you will coach again & again & again & AGAIN……because you’re addicted like so many of us. It is the culture, the people, the complete team aspect of great play (or scratchy play for that matter), the technical, the long term incremental development we implement & observe, the athleticism, skilling the less talented etc, etc, etc.
I’ve been engaged by your blogs recently. I congratulate you on presenting your perspective.
Could I respond with some of my own? Brighton SIV is now at a point where it seeks to be a feeder program. We have developed our own junior league club it’s true, we want as many kids playing junior league as possible, not all students seek the club association. We are also rapt that our highly talented students are seeking opportunities at other established league clubs – we encourage it. For example we would like to see a continuing spread of players to all clubs. This is probably not practical though. However we would like to see more boys join Henley, grow the supply to South, continue our connection to Lion & develop our own junior league teams. That’s a big agenda. That’s a big commitment to the game in this state. From a big picture perspective this commitment is much more important than medals for individual Holdfast Bay Junior teams. Our program has become huge we must spread the wealth of players. We believe this mentality will help the game to grow into the future. The notion of a single affiliation, for our program, is redundant and has been for a while now.
We also have educational & curriculum outcomes as our primary responsibility, we’re a school not a club. Our goal is to provide something that further connects students to their school. We seek to create a program whereby kids can’t wait to get to school because they are part of this unique thing called SIV. SIV is expected to enhance responsibility, behaviours & outcomes in all subject areas. This is a high expectation placed on us by the school & stakeholders. This responsibility comes well before tournament play, win/loss results, clubs & affiliations. Its philosophical stuff which gets back to things like student self esteem, academic application, civics & students taking their place in the world in a constructive, positive manner, it is much bigger than volleyball. This is no different to any other motivated, professional teacher or school. We just happen to use this great game as a conduit in seeking those outcomes.
I’ve picked up on comments that you have repeated a couple of times. You’ve repeated student comments which state that we just play matches & king court. That’s selling us short mate. If you ever asked kids “what they did at school today” invariably they respond with plutonic responses like “nothing” or “I can’t remember”. I feel your repetitive notions in your blog that we only play games &/or king court is the equivalent answer when asking SIV kids about what they are doing in class. We are committed in our approach, demanding on ourselves & our students. We continually analyse our operational paradigm. You don’t become Australian champions with a simplistic approach. You can’t beat Heathfield & Eldo with a simple approach. You don’t defeat a great program, run by a great coach & volleyball people enjoying an unprecedented era, playing king court.
You also seem to be implying credit for player development & success coming outside or in spite of our SIV program. That’s a bit rich! We seek to complement each other. Simply put there can be no doubt we are integral to the introduction & development of our students volleyball performance. We seek to complement & enhance their progress with any individuals, teams or clubs that have a similar passion to our own & yours.
It’s always good to speak, read & now reply on line with you Huy. Keep up the great work.
Cheers Jamie Tester
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It’s great to have someone from Brighton’s programme add some comments to the post, and he makes some good points. Brighton is now a great feeder programme to our league clubs now, and having a spread means that more kids stay in the game. A lot of kids used to drop out of volleyball after High School because it was so competitive to get into their affiliated club’s teams. They would have to be really motivated to start over fresh with a new club. In a perfect world, players from all the big volleyball schools would play for different clubs, keeping more people in the game and spreading the talent around. I’ve seen some Heathfield players play for other clubs, like Fleur Holmes and Megan Avery at South, Kim Eldridge at Norwood, and Jason Potts at Austral, but we’re still losing out on a lot of their great players dropping out.
Jamie’s also right that Brighton SIV teaches a lot of important life skills off the court too, as any special programme would. I think Brighton’s culture has become a lot stronger in recent years. I felt it used to be a lot more participation focused in earlier years (which is where Willunga is at now – trying to get as many people involved), but is now more focused on also doing things right. Like Jamie says, you have to do a lot to beat Eldo and Heathfield for the # 1 spot.
Special Interest Programmes of any sort are a great idea. It’s a shame that we don’t have academically selective public schools here anymore, so anything that schools can offer for kids to apply themselves is great. SIV, as well as Brighton’s Special Interest Music programme (which I feel has become eclipsed by SIV and a bit forgotten) give kids a tangible goal of excellence, and put them through the steps to achieve it. The public schools with these programmes are the better ones in SA – Marryatville and their music programme, Glenunga with the International Baccalaureate, Norwood Morialta and their drama programme etc. They really set them apart from the rest. Though I still find volleyball to be a strange “conduit” for a programme since in spite of how much I enjoy it, it’s always felt like bit of an obscure activity. But it is a great sport that is very gender inclusive and allows for wide participation.
I should also apologise for my clumsy writing and point out that it’s been a while since I’ve been told that Brighton’s trainings were just modified games and King of the Court. I got given that feedback from players and parents round 2003, 2004, but as i said, I am not sure what they teach now. Some of those same players said that the lessons got a lot better when they reached year 11 and 12. It’s certainly hard for me to imagine those kids not getting good training there with the many qualified coaches they have there. In any case, Jamie is right in pointing out that you reach #1 by playing king of the court.
But I also have to point out that I think they have made improvements to the organisation of their AVSC campaign that i think have also helped them get better results. One big thing I’ve noticed is that they now have the boys teams and girls teams at separate hotels. I think ever since 2004 when they came back with a disappointing 2 medals (but still came second in the Cup), they’ve been looking at ways to improve their chances of success in everything they do. I was impressed with the way Brighton organised things the year I went with them, and it’s only improved since. I really appreciated it the following year when I coached for Willunga which didn’t have the same resources, and just how hard it was to be competitive without that support and planning. It’s something that deserves a post all on its own.
I don’t think that their success comes in spite of the great things they’ve done. They’ve obviously been changing and improving the way they do things in recent years. I think having Jeff Healey and Jamie Tester joining their staff in recent years has made a huge difference. But i still maintain that their playing group is so strong right now because there are more of them playing for clubs than i can remember. When players compete more at that level, they’re more competitive.
I can certainly say that if we had more players at Willunga playing club volleyball, we’d have better chances of winning the third honours spots in the older age levels. We haven’t gotten in the younger age groups yet either, but our chances there are better because at that age, the disparity in training and experience isn’t as pronounced. Once kids at other schools get to the age where they also play club and state, and our kids don’t, we’re left way behind.
In the past you might see fair few of their older Brighton teams with kids playing League and reserves, but now you see more creeping into the younger age teams, and that makes a big difference. Spike Magazine also reported in its AVSC edition that Brighton also had 35 representative players in their squad. That’s got to be a record! You can’t ignore the fact that they probably have the biggest amount of kids playing high standard volleyball in addition to playing for Brighton, and it’s a big reason for why they’re so strong right now.
But it works both ways. Because Brighton does a great job (those 35 kids wouldn’t have made state if they weren’t doing something right), clubs like ours are enjoying the benefits of having better players and stronger junior programmes too. This year, a couple of our coaches at the club were Brighton graduates too, so we can’t claim sole credit for these talented kids.
Heathfield has historically shown best practice in just about every area of playing, coaching, developing and organising school volleyball. It was like they were in front by a country mile, and I am still in awe and reverence for how they do things. They have managed to beat Brighton for the cup in some years when their programme was smaller and they took over less teams. They’ll always be the Camelot of volleyball in my books and have my bias for a long time! But I think we can all agree that the gap has definitely become a lot closer.
It’s going to come down to an interesting showdown at AVSC next year between Heathfield and Brighton. Brighton looks to keep a lot of its strong players and teams, but I’ve never been in the habit of betting against Heathfield. And Heathfield have come back with a vengeance the handful of times they’ve lost the cup. Brighton is strong, but the wrath of Heathfield should never be underestimated!
