Volleyball U14 Girls Co-Captain’s Reflections

Fu Yat Tsing S2M

I am Fu Yat Tsing from S2M, Co-Captain of the U14 girls volleyball team.

Over the volleyball competition season, the U14 volleyball team has definitely come a long way since when we first started. Many of the players from the previous year had left the co-curricular activities (CCA) and we had to coach many new players moving up from the primary section even though we ourselves were not confident in our volleyball skill level. This caused us to worry at first whether the competition season would be a massive failure. However, we trained and improved. The new players were also quick learners and many of them were already around the same level as us. It was great as our team became stronger and we started to be able to work together as one team instead of splitting into different friend groups or our respective grades. Team dinners and the team group chat also helped us to bond with each other and new friendships developed. Soon, we grew more confident in our sets and spikes and we also learned how to receive strong and fast serves though we still struggled returning serves from a very powerful jump server during matches. However being aggressive at the net helped us and we started to win many of our games. We made the playoffs and eventually made it to the finals!!

Some persistent issues we had faced over the season were the fact that we could crack under pressure and our emotions could take over.  To counter the issue, we had to learned to calm down or sometimes Mr Wojewnik would call time-outs to tell us to relax and loosen up. This definitely helped and we learned to laugh off mistakes and focus on winning the next point instead. Another issue was to try to get our serves in the court consistently. We overcame this by training and practising our serves during lunchtime (strongly encouraged by Mr Wojewnik) which also helped improve our ball control (volleyball rallies). We were also taught to have more confidence, and play to win instead of playing safe, as many of our points were gained from playing aggressively.

Volleyball CCA really taught us many lessons and skills that could be applied to many other sports and real life. Many of the members of the U14 volleyball team and I have made new friends and we have all bonded over the few months of the competitive season. It was a great opportunity for all of us and we look forward to playing again.