After a successful volleyball tournament in Muscat, our team was eager to continue training so that next year’s team would be even better. Since we are a small school, training is usually only for one season so that enough athletes are present for each sport. This results in short training seasons for each sport, which makes it difficult to become so good to win the tournament. By playing throughout the year, even if it is just once a week, it is much easier to start off the training season next August with more experience. Unfortunately, I just had my last SAISA, so that training won’t benefit me for an upcoming tournament itself, but I still enjoy playing and want to improve. A difficulty was that training was after community service on Thursdays, which meant I was really tired from working the previous days, but I still came each session to get a break from academics.
Out team (blue) versus another school during the SAISA tournament. Photo credits: TAISM photography.
Each session, our coach Janaka organised a team from a local team to come play against us. What was a lot of fun is that we knew many of the players, and especially that there was no pressure like at SAISA, so there was more opportunity to experiment with certain tactics and when someone messed up a point, it was not problematic. One of these tactics was the slide spike, where a player approaches from the center, but then runs behind the setter to the right (facing the net). This is very effective as it is a fast moves that confuses the opposite team’s blockers, which allows one to get a point fairly easily, although the move is hard to perfect.
Me spiking during SAISA. Photo credits: TAISM photography.
The training on Thursdays was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed the opportunity to continue playing volleyball and remain in the team spirit we had together on SAISA. Furthermore, even though I was tired after service at the end of the week, doing sports was very invigorating. Since I had practice for the Oliver musical band, unfortunately I could not play every Thursday. However, I knew that it was especially important for the players who will be continuing next to train.