Volleyball Reflection #1

Training - for the love of the game!

Similarly to my previous CAS reflection on badminton club, I have been training devotedly every Thursdays after school in volleyball club for the past six months. Unlike badminton, I was unfamiliar with this sport and recently introduced to it about three years ago in school.

Reflection - Action

After a total of about 23 hours of training to date, I believe I have improved both my stability and agility. To this day, I can set the balls much more precisely than before. Likewise, my bumps are stronger and more directed, although not always as accurate. From our hour-and-half practices, I have learnt that no matter how talented each player is, without perfection of the basic skills, no game of volleyball will be thrilling since it is the simplest techniques that form the foundation of the sport. 

A Numbers sheet to keep track of my volleyball training progress

With exhausting warm-up activities, together as a beginner team, my club has improved substantially - right from the beginning where the majority of the class was completely new to the sport to now - where we are currently advanced players of sets, bumps and even an attack technique - dips!

Helping Mr Wessely to coach!

Furthermore, we have learnt the three-step approach to any attack. I can now do this well enough along with a dip, or in German: ein Lob. In the near future, I hope to be able to do this approach without much thought and allow it to evolve into a reflex movement over time, just as professional players can do so! Nevertheless, with all the patience and perseverance my coach teaches us with, he warned that approaches like these take years to truly master and naturally execute. With this, I therefore want to motivate myself even more for volleyball practices.

Three-step approach execution

A perfect Lob!

4 VS 4

Reflection - Service

As much as I have been training myself to improve the necessary volleyball techniques, I have also been actively using practice time from volleyball club as a Service activity! This was inspired by my CAS coordinator, who suggested me to enlarge my Action activity into something bigger than physical education. Therefore by thinking outside the box, I presented the idea of helping to train the new students to Mr Wessely, our volleyball coach. To my surprise, he was not only thrilled about my enthusiasm but wanted me to think up of simple yet purposeful volleyball drills that I could teach to the class at the start of every training. This is a very beneficial activity not only to my teammates, but especially for myself since I would have to practice the tasks I set for the team beforehand and also teach confidently of a sport that I am actually learning!

After each training and the dismissal of the class, Mr Wessely and I discuss his plan for next week. Hence the theme of the session would be my ‘homework’, i.e. to come up with one or two drills preparing for the actual training.

During the beginning of each session, I usually spend about three minutes explaining my activity to the class. We then use 15 to 30 minutes of the session to practice it/them. These activities that I brainstorm are mostly adapted from videos that I discover online for professional teams as well as my own experience from PE class with our general warm-up tasks.

Volleyball Team!

To summarise, I have had a great experience overall on coaching my teammates and helping them in their techniques as they practice given activities. There were times where I stumbled on my own words and even made errors on a technique. Mr Wessely would then support and help me coach the students. I have learned to speak clearly and slowly when explaining, which usually comes after several mental recaps to myself. Towards the start, I constantly felt nervous as I was afraid of making faults. However, I see now that with those errors, the class can learn just as effectively to see why it was wrong and how to avoid it. Whilst they practice, we patrol the hall and provide tips for improvement, which is usually my favourite part because I can focus with the student one-on-one and help them as best as I can.

In future trainings, I will work harder to improve my coaching skills and remain confident in  the explanations. This way, I can further develop communication with my teammates and even practice speaking in German when required.

Volleyball Team!

More recently, Mr Wessely kindly lent me his volleyball handbook from which I am able select ideas for warm-up. It also clearly explains every rule and regulation and demonstrates specific techniques with easy-to-follow illustrations. I have been regularly reading the handbook as it will improve my knowledge on the sport. In fact, it is entirely in German so it aids my language skills too!

Mr Wessely's volleyball guidebook

In regards to the Learning Outcomes, I think I have attained the following: ① ② ④ ⑤ ⑥ and will work towards successfully achieving the last two: ⑦ ⑧.

Last but not least, I should mention that I watched my very first live volleyball match two weeks ago! (It was actually also the first official match of any sport I have ever watched live!) It was suggested by my coach and since it was being held in my school’s sports hall, nothing could have been a more excellent chance! 

Live. Action. Volleyball!

The atmosphere there was completely novel and unique to me. To see this sport played by girls of the fourth league allowed me to realise the how to techniques were properly used to effectively score points and how to rules were applied to the match. Overall, it was a great experience and I definitely hope to visit more matches in the future.

Evita ☺