After taking over full-time of the coaching reigns of the junior girls volleyball team, at the start of the year, I knew that I had a strong team. We had a big group of returning players from last year's championship winning team consisting of seven grade 9s and one grade 8 player. Additional, we had a whole group of new players coming in, primarily from grade 8s. As you probably already know, our season started right from the first week of school and plugged along steadily until the end of February. With most of the veteran crew having been practicing together since grade 7, developing their teamwork and skills over that time, this made it hard for any of the newcomers to crack the year-end SCISAC roster.
Truthfully, while I only coached the junior girls team, there were technically 2 teams. The first half of the season, was the local Macau season where the age bracketing allowed us to split a very big team into 2 more manageable teams. This did however mean that I was essentially running 2 teams simultaneously. The newcomers, while obviously very raw and undeveloped showed great coachability as the year progressed. While a few of them were simply looking to participate on an athletics team, by the end of the year, many were quite in love with the sport.
While really only one first year player cracked the SCISAC roster, this newcomer group has their own tournament called the PRC tournament. Our school was the host of this tournament, with schools coming in from Zhuhai, Dongguan, and Shenzhen. While lacking in prestige and with no trophies to collect, this group still had much to prove. The preliminary round saw them handle the opponents with ease, settling at the top of the pool and entering the playoffs as the 1st seed. It was much the same story in the semi-finals before the team faced their only really test of the tournament. The Dongguan school, as the other finalist, put up a good fight with their own brand of very organized volleyball. This forced us to really play as a team, and that we did. It was definitely conceivable that we could have lost that match if the girls cracked under the pressure or played an undisciplined brand of volleyball. Ultimately we did prevail 25-19, 25-22.
With the PRC tournament wrapped up successfully, the girls can look back at how far they'd come over the year. Certainly, skills wise they were considerably more able than they were at the beginning of the year. However, more importantly, the sweet taste of success after pouring in so much hard work since September helps them build their desire to take on an even bigger challenge next year. They certainly will, as with a near complete turnover of the SCISAC roster after this year, this group has large void to fill. A void made even more prominent, when considering the legacy left behind by the girls who are now two-time defending champions at SCISAC.
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| The next generation of TIS volleyball players. |
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