Year 6 Volleyball Division

After marking the morning roll in the Year 6 Great Space we headed out to Julie’s car (Georgia’s mum) & with mixed emotions of nerves & excitement, we were on our way to Tucker Road for the Division competition of Volleyball. After a few games of ‘I spy’, we arrived!  

  Firstly we were impressed by how professional the whole thing seemed… some of the teams had matching ribbons in their hair & some even wore knee pads!  Secondly, we were amazed by the beautiful gym! There were coloured lines marking the courts, all the nets were the same height and the ceiling was so high that there was no risk of hitting it!  And thirdly, there were 2 external, unbiased referees to umpire the matches… although Ms Carter thought our ref was secretly ‘on our side’! 

 We were briefed on the rules before our ‘fun game’ against Valkstone PS to start with while 2 other matches were played. It was a good warm up & we tried really hard to focus on our teamwork & serving technique because we knew the refs were going to be strict about having ‘air’ between our hand & the ball. Even though it didn’t count, we won the fun match.  Our first ‘real’ match was against Bentleigh West. We won the serve but used their ball for the first set. They won, 15-9. After swapping ends we used our ball for the next set & we won 15-4. We started to get a rhythm with our serves & were feeling confident going into the 3rd set. At 8-2 up, we needed to get to 10 in the tiebreaker, but the other team did some great serves too & they beat us 11-9. We were very deflated after losing when we were so close to winning, but we knew we had a second chance against Stella Maris, so it was time for a quick snack, a drink & a reset! 

We were pumped for our 2nd match. They served really well!!! The overhead ‘tennis’ serves were a bit intimidating & unfortunately for us, very accurate! They won the first set, 15-10. Again, the ref was very kind & gave us some pointers & encouragement because he could see we were pretty disappointed in ourselves. With a growth mindset, we started the next match & it was super close… we knew every point counted… but sadly, Stella beat us, 15-13, so they won the match and were into the grand final.  Of course we were really upset to be out of the running for Regionals but after another snack we felt a little better & were ready to support the two teams in the grand final.  

Wow! They were good! Amazing teamwork & great skills! Stella Maris had a cheer squad behind us & with some excellent serving & long rallies, they beat Valkstone in 2 sets to go through to Regionals. We didn’t feel so bad to be beaten by the best team on the day.   After our initial disappointment, we ended up back on the court, playing against each other for another 40 minutes until Selena (Scarlett’s mum) arrived to take us back to school.  

Overall it was a great experience. While we didn’t continue our winning streak from District sport, we are all still really proud of ourselves & we finished the day with smiles on our faces!!!  

We even invented a new game of sitting Volleyball! 

Mia K, Pippa, Scarlett, Micah, Georgia D & Freya   PS We missed our Year 5 teammates, Alex, Nicola, Elm & Astrid, but they had to make the tricky decision between Division Sport & Year 5 camp!