Volleyball Blog #1

Intramural Introductions

Welcome to my free inquiry project initial blog post! Here I will recap my weekly Tier 1 (humble brag) intramural volleyball team. First I will tell you how the scores unfolded but I also want to explore how I interact with my teammates as captain of the team. I want to focus on learning and improvement throughout the semester as coaching and teaching is an obvious passion of mine. Before I get into any of that, some preamble:

I started playing volleyball when I was 10 or 11 years old. I wasn’t a particularly gifted athlete in any sport, but volleyball was a sport that I grasped quickly and started to want to improve. Most sports I’d give up on too fast! Armed with a deadly underhand serve, I dominated the elementary school leagues. As I got into high school and beyond, I realized that I wasn’t an elite talent but nonetheless loved to keep playing and improving my game. Unfortunately, others at my high school didn’t share my passion and we didn’t have enough people sign up to front a team when I was in Grade 10, 11, or 12. At which point, I turned to coaching younger players and I learned a lot about myself as an athlete but also as a teacher. While not gifted with raw talent myself, I could use my experiences and knowledge to bring great athletes to their absolute best (hopefully!). Since then I have played intramural volleyball every semester other than the covid years since I’ve been in Victoria for almost 6 years. Having played with various teams full of different people across multiple skill levels. We have a pretty good team this semester (called Practice Safe Sets) and I am looking forward to actively reflecting on how we improve through these blog posts.

Week 1 Recap:

Game 1: Practice Safe Sets versus I’d Hit That; lost 2 sets to 1. “I’d Hit That” was full of young players, likely 1st- and 2nd-year undergrads and they played poorly at the start. We were able to capitalize on our chances early in the game, winning the first set. However, the advancing age of our team caught up with us quickly, and they started to click as a team. They took the second set narrowly and beat us in the third set in a battle to five points.

Game 2: Practice Safe Sets versus Lord Volleymort; won 2 sets to 1. “Lord Volleymort” was a more rudimentary volleyball team. They had a couple really good players but clearly had a couple that were still learning the sport at a basic level. We did lose the second set, likely as a result of our own mistakes, but handily took the third set 5-1.

The first couple weeks of the season, much like other educational endeavours, the ground work has be laid. First, we need to address which positions we will each play, then we need to work on positioning within the game. Here is a video I found helpful when I coached a few years ago in figuring out which positions play to the strength of each player:

Overall, happy with week 1 of volleyball. More in-depth analysis coming as the season progresses.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-playing-volleyball-6203521/