Volleyball Practice 3/12/12

Today at my house I decided to do my volleyball practice and check-in/test again just to see where I was, because I haven't done it for a while. I was inspired by playing in P.E. to play more!

Here are my results from today:

Bumps: 39

Sets: 11

Fist Bumps: 45

I'm excited for Thursday's tryout! I'm glad I had some time today to work more in preparation!

P.E. Volleyball

Today we started our volleyball unit in P.E. I was VERY excited when I walked into the gym and saw the volleyball net set up. I nearly jumped with joy! Before every P.E. class we get a little time to warm up, do whatever we want until class starts. Today, since there was the volleyball net set up, the whole class except one person played together until class. It was really fun!

Then our teacher came out and we ran our warmup lap. Then he started to explain some things about volleyball, which of course I already knew. He talked about the boundaries on the court and what they're called and stuff. Then he needed an example to show passing. He asked for someone who plays volleyball, so I raised my hand. So I got to demonstrate passing for the class! First he had me sit on the ground with my legs spread out and show there, then he had me get up on one knee and pass, and then standing up. He commented to the class on my form passing standing; he said I had good form, and pointed out how I bent my knees and spread my legs. Then, we passed in partners. We did the same routine I had done with the teacher, throwing the ball to the person sitting and then switch, knee and then switch, and then standing. Then we passed back and forth, which was fun, and we saw which team in the class got the most consecutive passes. Me and my partner got the most. We got 30, while most of the other teams got somewhere around 2-8 passes. One team got 17, which was the closest to what we got.

Then we played queen of the court. We broke into three teams of 6 people, except one team which had 5. He had people who played volleyball first, so there would be at least one experienced player on each team. I was one of the people, and there were two other girls too. One of them was my partner from the passing we had done earlier. Then we broke into teams. The game was two teams were on the two sides of the court. One side was the queen side. Whoever won the point would go to the queen side and stay there until they lost a point. We played that until the end of class and it was REALLY fun! At the end, all the teams had 3 points, except one who earned a fourth point right at the end of class.

Overall it was a REALLY fun P.E. and I am really excited to continue volleyball in P.E.!

Also, the tryouts for my school volleyball VA team are on Thursday! I am going to try out for VA, I was on VA last year, and I'm very excited for tryouts coming up! I hope I am able to be on the team again. I think I will be because I made it last year and I have improved a ton since then!

SillY Volleyball - 3/10/12

Sorry everyone, it's been a while since I posted, but I've been really busy! I've been going to SillY Volleyball on Saturdays, but I haven't been posting. The last few weeks there have been less people there than usual, so we do more things with all groups together and then the advanced group breaks off and we work with the beginner group for the rest of class.

This Saturday at SillY there were even fewer people than there have been lately. We did our warmup, 15 laps and the usual passing with a partner stuff, and then we basically broke into two groups to do our exercise with 3 passers on the court and a target. We broke into beginner and intermediate and advanced together. Then we did other exercises like serving and spiking practice. That was the point when the advanced group usually broke off to do their advanced stuff. This week they had the intermediate people go over, too. So I got the chance to play actual game-like scenarios and do advanced skills practice with the really good people! It was a really great experience and I think I improved a lot playing with them. Also, the advanced group stays later, so unexpectedly, we got an extra hour of playing time! Luckily we didn't have anything else we were planning to do. It was really great to get the extra time playing the more advanced and rigorous drills and working with more great coaches and amazing players! It was a really fun day at SillY and I learned and improved a lot.

One of the specific skills we worked on, that was new for me, was switching positions at a specific time during a volley. Basically, we started off in one position in the rotation, and after the serve or at another specified time during the volley, we were supposed to switch positions to another specific place and play there for the rest of the volley. I've seen private school teams I've played on my school team do that, so it was cool to be behind the switching for once.

Other than that, mostly I just improved a lot upon skills I already knew. They taught me what I was doing wrong for some things, and helped me improve on others with advice, and just with me observing the other players in the advanced group.

While we were playing the games we played with the other kids in the group, of varying ages, but also with the coaches (and for a while with the coaches' little 8 year old daughter, who's actually pretty good). It was a really good experience for me!