This year SAISA Boys Volleyball tournament was held in Oman, Muscat at TAISM. It feels astounding to have done my first SAISA ever,having only played volleyball for the past 3 months whereas most of my teammates have a lot of experience it is amazing to see how much I have progressed in my technique, knowledge of the game, positioning, serving, movement on the court as well as communicating and working with my teammates. We had practiced endlessly from morning and evening practices to Friday matches with local schools. This tournament has allowed me and my teammates to establish strong bonds as friends, and teammates along with improving our team chemistry.

This was my first time visiting Oman, and the middle east, this was an exciting moment for me. We finished off our first day(Tuesday) staying at the hotel and having dinner at Five guys, it was my first time eating there.

On Day 2 we met with our respective hosts and slept early to get ready for Day 3, Next morning was an early morning waking up at 6 am, as there was the opening ceremony, after the open ceremony the matches commenced,every team had 4 matches that day,we began with a great start, obtaining victory against ACS and AISC,it was amazing to see how far we had come as a team and how confident we were in our hitting as well as blocking as compared to 3 months back,however the day wasn’t over yet we still had to play against AISD and ASB, seeing AISD winning all of their matches we had to deliver our maximum effort, especially in our positioning as they played smartly, however, we couldn’t continue with our rhythm and the victory was theirs, being almost neck and neck with some awesome hitting and blocks. We didn’t let ourselves down and concentrated on our next big match against ASB,we started with losing the first set but started the next set with confidence and back to back points winning the 2nd set,the 3rd set was very close but we just couldn’t gain the edge and ended up losing, finishing off the day with 2 wins and 2 loses, after reflecting on our errors and performance we headed back with our hosts ending Day 3

Day 4 was a really important day as this decided whether we will continue on our journey and be in the semi-finals, it was essential to place top 4 for the chance to lift the trophy, our first match was against ISOI, underestimating them was a lethal mistake as we almost lost the first set,our blocking wasn’t effective against their playstyle, seeing their brilliant receiving and defense we had to make a change,the 2nd set was close however we took the lead and won the match,this taught us a lesson to never underestimate someone, even though their rankings in the tournament weren’t impressive they surely gave us a good fight. This was quickly overshadowed by our match against LS, ours spiking and blocking was on point gaining a big lead but they caught up, we ended up winning that set, however, our performance began to decline and gave the win to LS on the 2nd set, After great efforts, we won the match,Next was TAISM,they were dominating in the first set with some really good hits giving them win, Next set we began doing a triple block on their best hitter,we could see it was working as were we catching up to them,sadly they struck back and ended up winning the match 27-25,we were happy with our performance as they were one of the strongest teams,this loss didn’t affect us as our next match was the competition for the top 4, Continuing with our excellent performance we got the upper hand against KAS and won,we were finally in the Semifinals!!! We were proud of this achievement, a major improvement from last year’s 8th position, After the match, we finished off the day with a team social and headed back to our homes for an early morning.

Day 5 was the last and the most hyped day of the tournament, it was the day where our perseverance and hard work would pay off, even if we didn’t win, we still won as we made a drastic improvement from last years tournament,We started our day with our last round-robin match against LAS, ending up with a victory,but the main focus was our match against AISD, competing for a position in the finals, learning from our defeat against them before,we gave our best and gave a good fight while losing the first set but winning the 2nd one, however, the match wasn’t in our favor in the 3rd set and AISD headed off for the finals, it was disappointing not to make it into the finals but its the effort that matters, not the outcome, we were now competing for 3rd position with TAISM. The match started not in our favor, they had a big lead because of our weak covering giving them easy points causing us to lose the first set, but we didn’t give up and kept on fighting but we just couldn’t find our rhythm and lost the 2nd set as well,we had to win the 3rd set to even have a chance for top 3,sadly we lost the 3rd as well. This was the end of our journey, even though we didn’t achieve what we aimed for we certainly proved that we were one of the strongest teams in the tournament, seeing the spectators cheer for us, and especially me:) It was a major boost to our confidence.
The tournament ended with a team dinner with all the teams and the award ceremony, next morning we headed back to Colombo

Overall this tournament was an amazing experience, we played very well and also got the chance to make new friends. I was able to fulfill my goals for volleyball this year and will strive to improve on them for next year’s season as well.