This can be a periodic replace in my position as Indoor Efficiency Director for Volleyball England. I laid out the excessive degree priorities beneath which I’m working in my preliminary submit.
Right here’s what’s been occurring since my final replace, and what’s developing within the subsequent couple months. It’s been an intense time period as we’re coping with staffing modifications and are engaged on restructuring how we function to hopefully do issues extra productively and successfully.
Senior Girls’s Head Coach change
Most likely the most important headline of the previous couple of months is that the England Senior/U22 Girls’s Head Coach stepped down. Now we have changed her with an interim head coach in the meanwhile, and can do a seek for a everlasting alternative sooner or later.
Senior Males in Iceland
Sticking with the Seniors, our Males’s workforce traveled to Iceland a couple of weeks in the past to play a triangular with them and the Faroe Islands. Each opponents are collaborating within the CEV Silver League this season. We wish to get ourselves to the monetary level the place we can also play within the Silver League, so this was a possibility to check ourselves towards groups at that degree.
The fellows had a productive weekend, enjoying each of their opponents twice. They beat Faroe every time, however misplaced to Iceland in each cases. The matches had been aggressive, although, with the primary one ending 3-2.
April Juniors camp
In April we ran our newest nationwide workforce camp for the juniors. The foremost new factor we did was cardiac screening for the athletes. That is one thing we’re now making obligatory frequently for all our nationwide workforce and pathway athletes as a part of bettering each our efforts round athlete welfare and correct governance. We additionally did bodily testing (leaping and velocity).
The factor I used to be fairly happy with, although, was the depth of suggestions the coaches gave to every athlete. That’s been one thing we’ve been engaged on for a yr now. Nonetheless a methods to go to get to the place we have to be in the end (e.g. particular person growth plans), however we’re making good progress.
Indoor/Seashore conflicts
We’re into the time of yr the place there are inevitable clashes between Seashore and Indoor occasions. The most important that we’ve been working by means of is round athletes eligible to symbolize England on the U20 degree in Seashore in a zonal event we’re internet hosting (which is a Euro qualifier) in addition to on the U22 degree in Indoor at Euro qualification. For the ladies these occasions overlap, and for the lads there’s solely a couple of week in between. Realistically, you possibly can’t play each.
That is one thing we’re going to must take care of frequently. Our greatest athletes are inclined to play each disciplines. We’ve acquired some ideas in thoughts round the best way to scale back uncertainty, although. Much more so now that we’ve acquired a brand new 12-month coated seashore facility being developed.
Upcoming
I discussed the U22 qualifier above. That would be the largest factor on the calendar over the following three months. The Girls play first in Slovakia the primary week of July, with Poland and Isreal as the opposite groups within the pool. The boys go to Italy a couple of week later, the place they’ll be joined by Denmark and Ukraine of their group. Robust challenges for each, to make sure.
Denmark may also be an opponent for the Senior Males after they as soon as extra take part within the Nordic Cup in early August. The Danes will host. Sweden and Norway additionally featured within the occasion final yr. I’m unsure who all will likely be in it this time round.
On the Juniors entrance, we’re sending a gaggle of U19s to Croatia in mid-July for the International Problem. This will likely be our first time going to this occasion, although we’ve had particular person gamers and workers attend with different groups earlier than.
In late August we’ll have our subsequent huge juniors camp. That will likely be to find out choice for our U17 and U19 zonal championships squads (tournaments in October).
Lastly, over the weekend we acquired phrase that FIVB has accredited our request for funding to do some nationwide workforce coach coaching. This is similar kind of funding we acquired final yr to carry Jim Stone over to current at a symposium. We’ll be taking a look at what we are able to do that yr to construct on that.
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