Gym injustice

From Murph:

At least you do have a beach court to fall back on, Huy…In that past I have been told ‘you can use the tennis court’, ‘you can use the oval’ and ‘you can use the drama room’ (15′ roof), when the year 5 play had to be set up on a Friday morning for their show on Monday afternoon. Other than the ‘big two’ I don’t think there is a coach in SA who hasn’t had the flood boards (not Taraflex) pulled out from under them after a long commute to training!!

Willunga has had its beach volleyball court for quite some time. I never used it in all the years i was there and it sat there derelict with a droopy net. Earlier this year it got a big renovation thanks to some initiative for the unemployed:

http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/targetwork/pages/projects/volleyball/?reFlag=1

Now, if only we could get them to build us a gym…

Gym Rage

Just found out a few minutes ago that Willunga is setting up the Gym this afternoon for their yr 12 graduation tomorrow. In short my scheduled training in the gym tonight has been canned. Not happy Jan. Princi only found out a few mins before me, so it’s no one’s fault, but there is seriously some sorta breakdown in communication there since this isn’t the first time.

Few things piss me off more than finding out at short notice i don’t have a gym to train in. You make plans, and then something always crops up. and the amount of times i’ve driven an hour to Willunga to find out for some stupid reason i can’t have a full training or even a gym is getting annoying (luckily most of the time i get told before i make the long trip). I can accept that life doesn’t revolve around volleyball, but this is annoying. And no, “you can use the beach court” is not an acceptable alternative.

It’s unfortunate that a lot of schools just don’t have the resources to have alternative “venues” than their gym. My high school never held anything in the gym. It had a large hall for assemblies and big events. It also had a chapel. And a “theatre” for stage plays…. and then the glorious gym with 3 courts that hosted Volleyball SA’s blue ribbon monday and wednesday night social comps. And yet we never had a team and those nets went to waste the rest of the time.

There are other downsides to having to use your gym for “events” – the floor gets trashed, equipment gets trashed/stolen etc. Schools like Brighton and Heathfield are really lucky to have a regular PE gym AND a volleyball facility now. I know brighton has a proper hall for its music programme too. Classrooms may feed the young mind. But it’s the gymnasiums and halls that provide a healthy body and soul. I still think sport and the arts are the two greatest gifts an individual can have in society and without offering kids a generous amount of both we’re really shortchanging them.

I’m sure i’m not the first (nor last) coach that has gym issues. I remember the Rostrevor open boys team (who had won junior and intermediate honours golds and an U17 silver) not being able to get into their gym till late. The yr 8 basketball team got prtiority over them. I remember being pretty annoyed when we turned up to our first club training at hawks one year to find a netball team in there. The School had double booked the gym and basically broke a contract with us. We didn’t sue, and ended up having to find “other arrangements” for the year.

I guess the worst case of “gym rage” i’ve ever had was when my club president double booked my first reserves training. I had just reluctantly taken up the team, and my president (who wasn’t there that night) had booked us and the reserve men on the same court at the same time. I rang her, and gave her a mouthful. I’m really not proud of that, because within 5 minutes, she had resigned as president. if i was reluctant to coach that team, she had been reluctant to be president for another year and the spray she copped from me was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. I’m glad we patched it up in the end, but it’s still something i’m ashamed to have done to this day.

So for today, i’m going to chill out. no use yelling at anyone, because it’s no one’s fault and nothing can be done. As the TAO says, you just gotta go with the flow. As the coach you can’t expect your players to be positive and make the most of things if you don’t set the example. Princi will take the girls on the oval for fitness stuff and i’m going to hustle for some outdoor nets and try to make the most of it. After all the girls said they all made plans and wanted to turn up, so i should make the commitment too. It looks like it was the players that set the example this time, and for that i’m incredibly pleased.

At least daylight savings is good for something after all.

Mo[o]re honours debutantes

Ain’t variety the spice of life! Congrats to the Loxton [home of Tony Modra] boys for qualifying for honours. No third slot for them, they went for the jugular and took the gold in a thrilling 5-set epic. Brighton would have had quite a few state reps and guys that played league/reserves, however i’m sure the Moore brothers more than made up for that!

Sadly, two regular honours i didn’t see there were Rostrevor College and Renmark. But it was good to see some schools i’d never seen before at the cup – Coober Pedy, Craigmore, Peterborough and Blackfriars.

Mark Moore

Loxton High School also qualified for Honours for the first time ( in their first attempt) when the under 17 boys beat Brighton in the gold medal game, 15-13 in the final set.

Honours!

After 8 years of disappointments and near misses, I finally got a team to qualify for honours at AVSC. Willunga’s U15 girls team played valiantly over the weekend to claim the “third slot” in honours and, for the first time will get to enjoy playing against the best teams on the best courts in best of 5 set matches. I cannot describe how happy I am at the moment.

It was probably the first time I got to work with a bunch a kids at Willunga who all had the ability and the willingness to go for it, so all credit to them (my apologies to everyone I have ever pushed to qulaify for honours who didn’t really want to!).

Besides us there were two Heathfield and two Brighton teams competing to get in. There were some pretty exciting matches. We lost our first game against the top Brighton team by a point on countback after taking the first set 28-26. We nearly lost to the second Brighton team on the last day winning the first set from 23-20 down, and the second set from 23-19 down.

So to Elke, Brianna, Georgie, Myriah, Maddy S, Maddy L, Jess, Morgan, Carly, and your coach, Shantel, well done! You are Willunga High School’s FIRST honours team in its 13 years of competing in the cup! You’ve done us all proud and made one particular tragic very happy. We got plenty of work still to do!

PS. thanks to steph for helping me out at trainings, and princi for putting the extra work in. Couldn’t have gotten there without you guys!

———————–

I also spent much of the weekend working with our U16 girls team who have been training a lot with our U15s. Whilst they didn’t win a game, there were some really positive things to take out of the tournament. In the end it was some skill areas that let them down, but i think we can definitely work on those and have a good tournament in AVSC.

My open boys went down to a second Heathfield side in the gold medal match. They have a boom German recruit that is making a big difference. The U16 boys came 4th and our U17 girls have the option of playing honours given that only 3 teams entered into the honours comp. Meanwhile, Princi’s open girls had a mixed tournament and we’re banking on the white line fever to take over when they get to Melbourne. They’ll be playing open div 2 and we’ll be hoping to make another medal in it this year.

My commiserations to Heathfield’s U15 Honours girls who lost the gold medal to Brighton. Heathfield had the hottest game all tournament (tight passing, classy setters, a quick attack to envy and of course, Georgie Rowe) but were beaten by a raging Brighton team that couldn’t seem to do anything wrong (except set the ball cleanly at times). See y’all in Melbourne!

Haileybury wins U16s at Vic State’s School’s Cup

A belated comment on something i posted ages ago about all the stuff I was reading in the papers on Haileybury.

Lookes like the honours school that appeared out of nowhere has a good bunch of home-grown players, and will playing at that level for quite some time. With a more even spread of talent in Vic schools, the school’s cup there seems less predicable than ours here. to get into honours once is great. to get in again with another group is even better and proves that it wasn’t just a fluke. it’s sad to see that some of the early AVSC winners aren’t around anymore. You want to be able to keep building on the successes you have.

For the record, I’ve always been a fan of scholarships. After all, my folks were always big fans of getting us the best education that (someone else’s) money could buy. The hoity toity private school i went to never let us have a volleyball team. They probably more interested in putting another rowing boat in the ater (they had like 20 of them and the tightarses couldn’t give us a damn volleyball team! and yes, i’m still bitter about this). So Haileybury’s got one up on where i went to in my books!

With a bit of luck, maybe our U16 girls team will qualify for honours this year (our own state school’s cup is on this weekend) and get the chance to play Haileybury in Melbourne. But with some pretty skilled teams in our division to qualify, it’s going to take a bit of work. I hope we can say we’ve qualify for honours this time next week too.

————————————————–

Hannah

hi.
i would just like to say, that as a haileybury student, i am sick and tired of people’s abuse of our volleyball program. all this stuff about poaching players and not developing any themselves is a load of lies.
when i was 13, i entered the world of volleyball, and fell in love. i had no clue about the game, and my coach’s had shown me everything. i have been at this school since year five, and i cop abuse from people of all ages about the alleged poachings.
i myself think that if a elite grammar school offers your child a scholarship, then you would be crazy not to accept. everybody is calling us selfish, ,but we are giving these young people oppurtunities that they may never have had.
it makes me soo mad when people shine a negative light on my school.
and just to prove them wrong, our u/16 honors team just won a gold medal at state school champs, with no girls who are on a volleyball scholarship.
go figure…

AVSC 08: The Third Slot

The honours divisions at AVSC are a bit like the UEFA cup. The best 3 teams from each state have to qualify at their respective State Schools Cups to have a crack.

The SA State’s Schools Cup is essentially TWO tournaments: one tournament between Heathfield and Brighton over who will finish first; the other tournament between the rest of us over the “third slot” for honours. And if Rostrevor has a team in that division you can forget about it. It’s volleyball at its most colourful.

Besides Rostrevor [who have in the past actually qualified higher than the big 2], other people in the “Third Slot” category include Unley High, Adelaide High, and Renmark. The contenders each year are too many to list. Once again, I’m in the hunt to get a Willunga team into honours. We have three teams that will have a crack at it in U15G, U16G and U17G. My boss at the hawks, Paul Finn is having a crack at OHG at St Mary’s. For anyone to get their first Honours booth is no easy feat. Its comparable to putting a man on the moon. You generally have a better chance the younger the division. as they get older, the gap between the kids who play for fun and the ones who train like professionals gets wider.

A big concentration of the state’s best players and volleyball resources in two schools creates an interesting situation at AVSC where the big two SA schools dominate at the honours level, but next to impossible for them to win at the div level.

Reason being that even though it’s not honours, Div 1 can be pretty damn hard. I should know having nearly come last in div 1. Three times. When i coached open div 1 girls a few years ago we went up against a number of teams with girls who had just played in the AVL finals before.

Over the border, Div 1 teams are often a lot closer to honours standard than the div 1 teams here. With a more even spread of talent some were just unlucky to miss out. For Brighton and Heathfield division teams with an honours team in the same age group playing above them, it’s even harder. They’re playing against teams with some really classy players while the best 6-8 players at their school their age are playing honours. each team could have at least a couple of better players than their best player (I’m sure they’re probably too distracted winning honours medals to really give this much thought). It was an incredible feat that the brighton open boys won both a gold in honours and bronze in div 1 last year. div gets harder the older the age groups get. By opens, you’re up against players getting close to national selection.

Some scary-ass players i can think of who played Div 1:

• Adam Maskell for Rostrevor in 97 (i think? someone will correct me if i got it wrong)
• Simon Philips for Edward John Eyre in 02 (with possibly the baddest ass mohawk i’ve ever seen)
• Tarsha Prasski for Luther in 03 (in div TWO. imagine lining up against Tarsha Prasski in div 2!)

Even Chris Little was quite dominant for us in our Open Div 1 boys team last year. In one game, the duty team started putting our points up whenever chris was set the ball, BEFORE he even made contact with it. I recall one year the Tutton boys (Aden and Brad) were considering putting in an Immanuel College team full of PE standard players for Div 2.

What the Deuce?

As far as comments go, this has got to be one of the weirdest. not even sure if it’s spam!

——————————

Adam Reads
http://www.standardsports.biz.ly | standardsports10@yahoo.co.uk | 41.210.3.255

This is to inform all Rugby and Volleyball players of the new club Offers About 720 Volleyballers and Rugby players are need or the next season across Europe and South America for both division two and division three respectively.Interested Volleyballers and Rugby players must be betwwen the ages of 16 and 35.
Interested applicant must possess an International passport
Interested applicant shall assume training assessment in the United State of America immediately after selection.Benefits
Accommodation facilities are available
Continental dishes and meals
Medical facilities
Free Volley and Rugby Kits
Insurance facilities.
Training allowances
Interested Players should please contact us
Tel:+44(0)702-404-2683
Fax:+44(0)703-191-1471
Email:standardsports10@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.standardsports.biz.ly
Thank you.
Adam Reads(Mr)
Assistant Director
Standard Rugby &Volleyball International Agency

From About, 2008/10/01 at 1:51 PM