After the SAISA volleyball season and the culminating tournament in Kathmandu, I  could not wait to resume playing volleyball when Fun Volleyball started in April. In fact, the months before the training started I thought of volleyball nearly every day at least once, and I went to the gym (see post here) partly to improve my jumping height. Since I had concert band on Mondays, I could only go to training on Fridays. Having training only once a week is much less productive, but it was still fun to play again. A net was also put up on the sports field, so we played a lot during breaks.

Training was on Tuesdays and Fridays and I decided with the team of last year that we should view this activity as a preparation for the upcoming SAISA volleyball season, and that we should take it serious. We agreed on doing technique and skills training and game training on Tuesdays and Fridays respectively. After last year’s rather unsuccessful season, we knew in which areas we had to improve in (which were many). I wanted to focus especially on receiving/digging and blocking and spiking.

Me blocking a spiker from Dhaka last SAISA volleyball tournament. Blocking was one of the main focuses for the team during training. Photo credits: Lincoln School

I personally focused especially on spiking and jump serving. Last year I only got a handful of relatively good spikes at the tournament, and we were all aware that spiking is the only way to reliably make points. To do good spikes though, it is necessary to receive good sets, which is why I worked together with Joshua, the team’s setter, during a large part of the training to improve our teamwork. One of the things I had to pay attention was keeping both arms in the air for longer and watching the ball.

My jump serving was very unstable last year. Less than half of my serves would go into the field, and again only half of those were good serves, so I desperately wanted to improve, as the jump serve can be very useful. The most challenging part in jump serves is the timing and getting the correct contact point when hitting the ball.

As this was not SAISA (South Asia International Schools Association) competition training, there were many beginners, so sometimes it was challenging to get good training. On the other hand, it was nice seeing how others have fun in the sport, and some people were quite good considering them only starting the volleyball, so it was quite promising for the upcoming volleyball season.