I was very eager to start playing volleyball again on the first session in August. I played volleyball in South Africa, and was captain for the school’s team, so it was great to get going again after half a year of no serious playing.

The season started well – we did not have too many players to make training difficult and everyone was motivated and focused, which made the sessions on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday very enjoyable. We had several games on Fridays against local school teams, which was a very good opportunity for the whole team to experience match conditions and to keep concentrated and motivated, especially because the opponents were mostly better than us.

The training is hard and tiring some of the times. The hardest drill is blocking, where we do about 70 blocks in seven 10-jump segments. I feel that we all improved though, since we were extremely tired after the first time, and now it is not as tough and we can jump higher. We do many drills to improve our playing as a team and positioning in different rotations, such as the butterfly drill. Lots of time is also spent on spiking training, so that the setter can practice accuracy and the hitters their spikes. For this drill we focus on making it not obvious where the setter will put the ball so that the opposition does not know where to block.

I improve in several areas. I concentrated on bumping and setting technique and now am able to receive the ball very well and can set accurately. I am still trying to improve my spiking and therefore often stay behind with some other players to practice this.

The team before a friendly match

The team was selected in the middle of September and I was happy to be team captain together with Jordan (his blog is here), so that we could manage and organize the team together, both on and off the court. I enjoy being captain as it teaches me cooperation and organizing skills, and I also need to focus and stay confident to motivate the other players, which is vital in volleyball. I attended both training sessions over the holiday. The first session was very good; there were only four of us so training was very intense and I greatly improved my spiking and jump serving.

Me practicing jump serves. Photo credits: Savindi Jayasuriya

Spiking training. Photo credits: Gecko Net

Practicing bumping. Photo credits: Gecko Net

Our team before the tournament

I am very excited for the tournament and want to get in a good position with my team, therefore I practice very hard at being able to do jump serves consistently and being able to spike better than I did in the beginning.