INTRODUCTION
This year, I had decided to try and make it into a SAISA team seeing how it is something I had not previously experienced before. To decide the SAISA I would choose I looked at which ones I found the most fun and the ones that I already had a good understanding of. In the end I had concluded that SAISA Volleyball would be the most appropriate for me seeing how it is a sport that I enjoy a lot and I had already gone to the practices a few years ago.
IDENTIFYING MY GOALS
Following the very first practice during early August I was able to identify the areas of the sport where I was weak on and could improve to make myself a player worth taking on the SAISA team which, this year, would travel to Nepal for the tournament. The areas of improvement would include:
- Receiving the ball
- Effective serves
- Blocking at the net
- Powerful spiking
These areas of improvement would eventually become part of my CAS Goals (http://mpringiers20.edublogs.org/2018/08/21/cas-goals-2018-2019/). My plan for improvement would be to attend all the practices and look out for feedback from my peers and coaches. Mostly the Improvements will come with bettering my technique, ensuring that the accurate techniques used are used consistently and to improve my confidence in myself so that I prevent myself from making mistakes due to stress or fear of the ball.
TRAINING
Over the 2 months of SAISA Volleyball training we began each session with mandatory warm up stretches, arm exercises and squat jumps (to improve our net coverage with our jumps. Next, we would practice different variables of a volleyball play (spiking, serving, receiving, setting and passing) ensuring that our techniques improve and are at an optimal level of plan and finally, we would finish off with a 15-30 minute play at the end of the session to apply what we had learnt/practiced.
During the training, I would seek coach Janeka for some feedback and useful tips on how I could improve my receiving of the ball and my spiking capabilities. With the receiving aspect, he told me not the move my arms to add force but rather use my legs to propel my straight and rigid arm composition upwards and let the force of the ball bounce off my arms rather than having me move my arms upwards and risk the ball flying behind me rather than upwards. Another useful tip he gave me for receiving the ball was to angle my arms downwards a bit, therefore propelling the ball in front of me to a team member rather than straight up.
As for my spiking capabilities, Janeka told me to keep a straight arm when spiking downwards and to have the ball come in contact with my palm as it is the hardest surface on my hand. After these tips he told me to practice for 15 minutes, bouncing it towards a wall and continuously hitting it. At first it can slow but after a while I got used to the movement. After one perfect spike there was a loud and satisfying sound when the ball met with the ground. Janeka stopped me then and said “When you hear that sound, it means that you spiked perfectly.”
Attempting to block a spike from Jordan during practice
GAMES
Our team did not only practice volleyball within the members of the OSC team but, also played against other local schools that would occasionally come. During our first game, I was quite nervous. I was playing less well than I had in practice since I had little confidence in myself and felt intimidated by the skill of the other team. Eventually, after a few games I got round to blocking and spiking more as a result of my confidence being built. After I had seen that I could play effectively in a game, it improved my confidence even more once again, improving my play as a result.
Me, defending a spike during one of our games.
Conclusion
By the end of our practices I had greatly improved in all areas of the volleyball player and eventually got selected as one of the travelling SAISA members. Therefore, it could be said that I was successful in achieving an improvement in all aspects of volleyball. I gained confidence in myself when playing against other teams and was able to successfully apply my skills to the games. I still however, have some issues in regards to my service. My service is steal quite weak, in the sense that the trajectory becomes unpredictable and sometimes ends offcourt. Other than that I had improved a lot and felt ready to commence my journey off to SAISA volleyball in Kathmandu, Nepal.