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.
