Last week I had the great opportunity of re-visiting one of the classic volleyball tournaments on calendar – The U15 Nationals held in Albury-Wodonga, NSW.
It’s a weird format. 4-day event in April, and teams can represent schools, clubs or states. This year Heathfield High School bested Victoria for the Boys title, and seeing schools square off against states for medals isn’t uncommon.
The tournament has become a crucial step in the development of our junior girls teams as well as somewhat of a rite of passage. We won it in 2005 and have sent teams every other year since. Sadly we’ve always struggled to scrub together a boys team to take over and it’s definitely a missed opportunity. At Hawks, we make it a family trip with most of the players’ parents coming over and staying with them at the accommodation. It’s a good chance to get to know everyone and their families.
This year I took over our youngest girls group. I don’t usually coach the team but their regular coach couldn’t make it. They’re an exciting bunch and we have high hopes for them in the future. I was lucky to have one of the players’ dad and sister help me out on the bench and in the duties. The whole parent group was great. They took a couple of early and late duties to give the kids some extra rest on the 3-game days and got into a dance routine during our last game! (I’m a subscriber to the idea that teams that sing and dance together win together).
We did ok winning 4 out of 8 games and finishing 5th overall. We had a great 5-set win over Victoria White, coming back from 2 sets down. They were coached by Gareth, who coached the Eltham team my Willunga girls beat last year at ASVC after being 8-0 down in the 5th set. I hope our teams keep having good games against each other. We also had a good match losing in 5 to a Phil Borgeaud coached ACT.
Must say, I’m still not a huge fan of watching 14-year-old-girls go through full protocol warmup. There’s the odd hit that’s strong and directed down the line, but generally a lot of hits that softly go cross court into the opposition players. Harrnless really, but given that the stats showed that my team served the ball 100 times throughout the tournament more than they attacked it, we could have used the time more effectively.
At this level, serving (in) is still king. Borgeaud’s ACT team made it into the semi-finals with about 3 girls who consistently served underarm and won points. ACT weren’t as physically imposing as someof the other teams, but they had good fundamentals – good control in the armswing and platform in their passing.
I didn’t get to stay to the end as I had a game to coach back in Adelaide the next day. It was good to hear that Heathfield (an SA and school team) won the boys title in 5 sets beating Victoria. Must give out a special mention to the Norwood boys coached by Tom West. Like us they didn’t make it to the semi’s but stayed back to cheer a lot of teams on including ours in many a tight game!
