Adrienne's Volleyball Team

I had such a great time coaching my volleyball girls this year. And, it sounds like they really had a lot of fun, too. I ended up coaching the B Team, which consisted of girls in 7th through 9th grade. I have to say that these girls had spirit and they were always on their toes. They knew that they would not only be playing against all upperclassmen during tournaments, but that many of the Papua New Guinean teams were made up of girls that are the age of US college students. They really fought for every ball and they worked well together as a team. I could not be more proud of them!

My team was very diverse, which is always fun! Here are the grades and where I think they are from (sorry if I mess it up, girls).

Mary- Grade 9- Papua New Guinea
SeungYeon- Grade 9- South Korea
Iina- Grade 8- Finland
Gina- Grade 8- Australia
Krista- Grade 8- USA/Missionary Kid
Annie- Grade 8- USA/Missionary Kid
KK- Grade 8 USA/Missionary Kid
Jonita- Grade 8 USA/Missionary Kid
AnnaBella- Grade 8 Australia
Toria- Grade 8 Papua New Guinea

I have to admit that volleyball here is nothing like what I was used to. I played volleyball in high school during the fall term. We started training before school started and had at least 3 months to play. Our team (which was awesome) played league and non-league games. Then, based on your school record, you entered the play-off round of games followed by the championship games. After that, the coaches picked certain players to play in an All Star tournament where we got crazy big trophies if you were an MVP and such. This was a great chance to play with the best players from the whole league. One year, a few of us were even invited to a national tournament in Tennessee. Here, we even got a chance to work with amazing coaches who gave of their time to train you to be better.

So, like I said, I was a little unprepared for this season being so short. It was a total of 4 weeks....that's it. That's not (in my opinion) enough time for girls to increase the height of their jump. Guys can naturally jump; girls can't. Also, they played in two tournaments only. It is really hard (especially for girls teams) to jell together in that short of time. So, I think that this season (at least for volleyball...because soccer season is much longer), it is more like playing intramurals in college. You work with the teammates you have and play a wide variety of skills and talents. And, it ends up being a lot of fun if you think of it more like that.

Here are some pictures of my girls.....

Toria going up to block.

Sunny ready to receive.

Krista getting ready to set. (By the way, my setters were AWESOME! It took a while to decide which ones to use.....so I chose some of my best athletes and it paid off.)

Iina and Gina getting in position. They worked really well together.

Iina could set, hit, block, serve, you name it. So hard to believe that she didn't even like volleyball before this term!

Group talk...usually followed by our cheer: "We are the Warriors and we are quite a site. We are the Warriors and we'll put up a fight. Goooooo Warriors!"

Bella has such a great overhand serve! Hard to believe she is only in 7th grade!

The other pictures were taken at the first tournament at Ukarumpa International School (UIS). This picture was taken at the second tournament in Goroka (about a 2 hour drive). You can see that the court was pretty bad. And, we ended up not having any refs. The coaches had to take turns reffing the games.