The other day we decided to host a volleyball camp, a first for us, for youth in grades four to six. With a lot of sports, kids get to start playing them right away, but for some reason volleyball isn’t started until grade six or seven, usually.
In my small school growing up we took our grades four to seven to simply form a team and we played against a couple of teams, usually grade six and seven from Shaunavon, and a team like ours developed out of Cadillac, too.
So, grade four isn’t too young to begin and we went over our plan, had it all set out, and we brought in some of our club volleyball players to help. Over the last year our 15U team worked on perfecting skills and they facilitated the drills for us at the camp, helping identify and correct what the younger kids were doing.
It was a lot of fun watching the Vipers interact with the young players. The kids in grade four to six were eager to learn and were finding a lot of success during learning the skill as well as during the fun drill/games that followed.
The young players caught onto things quickly, soaking everything up and wanting to do it right, one even said she didn’t want to create any bad habits so to just keep coming to her with anything we saw.
She was already determined to get things right and do the absolute best that she could, she was going to be a volleyball player and wanted to perfect her skills already.
It turned out to be the perfect set up. We lowered the net to a height that they could find success at, made courts a little smaller, and only had three or four on a team with a Viper on to help them out.
I was quite impressed by the young kids participating at the camp, but was very much impressed with our Vipers as well.
They got to see a bit of a different side of volleyball, by getting to be a coach. They were patient and would help correct things in the kindest way possible. The girls were in fact the perfect leaders to have in there and the younger ones were thinking quite highly of them at the end of the day.
Afterwards one of the Vipers stopped at Dairy Queen in Carlyle on her way home and one of the young camp-goers was there. When the Viper said, “Hi,” to the young girl, there was a huge smile on the young girl’s face.
So, I think it was quite rewarding and a great experience for the older volleyball players to be able to help out and share their knowledge with the younger ones. And they all had a lot of fun doing it.
Also, because we had six Vipers helping each one had two or three camp goers to work with, plus Eugene, Eric, and myself got to walk around and help with whatever we saw so the kids attending were very close to getting one on one instruction, which youth can see huge strides in a very short amount of time if they’re not lost in large groups.
It was a great way to introduce younger players to the game, have our Vipers (who are great role models) be in a position to help those kids, and for a fun way of just enjoying a Sunday. Although you’re tired by the end of a day like that, it’s always a lot of fun to see all the smiles.
