Volleyball is king on the Sunshine Coast, as evidenced by a successful summer volleyball camp and summer beach season.
Last week the Chatelech Secondary School gym was the setting for the annual Sunshine Coast summer volleyball camp. Thirty-five players in grades 5 to 8 took to the court in the morning followed by 30 players in grades 9 to 12 in the afternoon.
University of British Columbia women's assistant coach Bethan Thomas was the head coach at the camp assisted by Chat coaches Quinn Campbell and Sara Schutz, Elphinstone Secondary School coaches Dan Tsuji and Brittin Korsch and Roberts Creek Elementary School coach Jan Richey.
Tsuji said all the coaches were impressed by the level of play and commitment from all the players
"Bethan has been running everything from basic fundamental skills to a little more advanced game play and tactics," he said. "With the younger age groups, we want them to get as many touches as possible, and also at the older groups, but just at a more advanced level. It's important because you hear all the time in volleyball that the general rule is 10 years, 10,000 hours and one million touches make a university player. So anytime the kids can get hundreds of touches on the ball, it's a lot better and improves their game."
The Sunshine Coast is certainly intense about volleyball, seen in the skill set when Coast Reporter stopped by Chat on Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 25.
"With the summer camp, you get the solid core group of girls who wouldn't miss it for the world," Tsuji said. "We were actually really surprised that we saw improvement in the first day, which you don't normally see. Usually near the end of camp, you get to see that skill level increase, but just basic ball control for the younger kids improved very noticeably the first day. The kids felt it, so their confidence went up, which made the second day better."
Tsuji said the Coast has a strong talent pool at the high school level, due in no small part to dedicated coaches at the elementary level such as Richey and Schutz. A strong club system is also producing high-level players.
"Basically the players who are coming into Grade 12 now have been playing club ball since Grade 6 or 7, so they are pretty strong and comfortable playing with each other," he added.
And success is not just being bred on the indoor courts. This summer, Tsuji started the Sunshine Coast Beach Volleyball Club and the turnout was huge with 14 U13 teams, three U15 teams, two U16 teams and three U18 teams.
"We had huge turnouts - way more than I expected," he said. "We hit the courts three to four times a week and just finished provincials a few weeks ago. We had three teams finish in the top 10 and had a couple of teams that probably should have finished a bit higher. One team finished fourth and the other was sixth, but both teams lost early round matches to the teams that won, so that was encouraging.
"Having that many U13 teams is phenomenal. We had more U13 players come out than all of the teams in the Lower Mainland had for their whole club. This was their first time being introduced to the beach game. It was great - they loved it."
Tryouts will start the first week of school at both Elphi and Chat, with games starting the third week of September.
