News
Underdogs Christ u14 borough champions!
2nd April 2007
Last Friday was the 1st u14 Richmond Schools Volleyball Championship Finals held at St Mary’s University College. Seven secondary schools (year 9 & 8) received coaching and competed in two cluster finals during 10 weeks and were seeded for the championships finals on the basis of these results.
The day’s play started with three preliminary matches in 5 groups. This generated three divisions of five teams which allowed the teams to get more competitive games of the close technical standard.
In Division 1 the final was Christ A against Hampton B. Hampton B started favourites coming top in their Cluster A finals held in February and also coming top in Division One group stage matches. Christ started well and dominated the 1st set. Hampton showed good character and fought back in the 2nd. But in the 3rd set Christ had the edge to come on top winning 2-1. A well deserved victory for underdogs Christ!
The Division 2 finalists were Orleans Park B and Teddington B with Orleans taking honours (2-1); and in Division 3 the finalists were Teddington A and Whitton A with Whitton winning 2-0.
This competition was the biggest volleyball event Richmond has seen so far in terms of number of teams. In total there were 14 teams, number of matches played (43), and number of courts used (5). Over the course of 5 hours the total number of sets played was 129 and the number of times whistles were blown - 6450.
Our big thanks go to the staff of St Mary’s College for hosting this competition. We would like to thank all the coaches and helpers involved. We would also like to thank all the teachers for providing extra equipment and helping with officiating on the day which came extra to their normal coaching role with their school teams. Finally a big thank you goes to the u16 Sport Leaders from Hampton CC and Orleans Park.
Vera Kenyon (Junior Coach) commented that although we had two terms experience with the older age group, preparing U14s to playing competitively in just 3-4 sessions was a huge challenge. 4 a-side format worked well and allowed players to grasp the rules and basic tactics of volleyball. The level of technical skills has been steadily rising from event to event and we saw some great performance last Friday. It was impressive to see how these young players kept their focus and spirit to the end of such a long and intensive tournament.
Children who will decide to get more involved in volleyball will have every opportunity to develop in Richmond Volleyball Club.
Richmond Volleyball Junior Co-ordinator praised the Richmond’s Competitive Edge project which has spectacularly increased involvement by local schoolchildren in competitive volleyball. Richmond has been partnering with Richmond Schools Partnership for 12 months and during this time has delivered three championship finals. Volleyball is now recognized as one of the top five priority sports in all Richmond’s Secondary schools. This is another fantastic achievement for Richmond Volleyball and for volleyball in general.
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