Volleyball Schools Cup - A Player's Perspective

Following our recent win in the Year 11 Open APS Volleyball competition, we entered a team, last minute, into the highly competitive Volleyball Queensland Senior Schools Cup. We coerced our amazing APS Volleyball coach, Mr Grocott, back into coaching duties and we went into the competition with only two training sessions under our belt.

Our team players were Stewart, Himman, Aaron, Will, Dom, Ahmet and myself.

The competition spanned three days and we quickly learnt what a challenging but rewarding experience we signed up for. We had no reserves on Friday, due to a clash with the Gold Coast Eisteddfod, but our team still placed second in our group leading into the weekend. With our full complement back on deck, we defeated Rockhampton 2 to 0 on Saturday to make the quarter finals and then defeated Stretton 2 to 0 to make it into the Semi Finals. Despite our best efforts, we were narrowly defeated in our third match by The Gap 2 to 0 (25 to 21 and 25 and 22) which pushed us out of gold medal contention.

On Sunday we valiantly tried to win the bronze medal for our school against Holland Park however after losing the first set 25 to 23 we forced a third set playoff by winning the second set 25 to 18. Unfortunately, we couldn’t hold on against our very experienced opponents and we were narrowly defeated in the deciding set 16 to 14.

We were up against 11 teams who trained all year for this event from across the state so 4th place was beyond our expectations and we were proud of our efforts.

Thank you to Mr Grocott for his coaching expertise and spending three days with us. Also, to our teachers, parents and other spectators who supported us and to Mr Lunniss for entering our team into this competition. We have improved immensely because of this experience and hope we get the opportunity to enter our side into this competition again next year.