Dunottar Volleyball: From Zero to Hero in Just one Season!
27th June 22
Last September, we began investigating the idea of starting a recreational volleyball club for pupils, not with the aim of competing, but just for pupils to learn how to play the sport and have some fun in the process.
Inspired by the famous manga series Haikyuu!! (volleyball in Japanese), and curious about the sport, more than 60 pupils from Year 7 to Year 10 signed up to the new club. After a couple of sessions, around 15 players started to show the necessary skills and qualities to play volleyball, so we began training regularly on Saturdays, focusing on the technical and tactical aspects of the sport.Just a few weeks later, on 22nd November (a day that will go down in the school’s history) the “Dunottar Warriors” played the first ever volleyball fixture for Dunottar School against Christ College Guildford, bringing home victory with a great 3-1 win (25-19, 25-22, 13-15, 15-12).
With more fixtures under their belts, the team showed continuous improvement in every training session, individually but more importantly, as a team. The perseverance and tenacity shown by the players paid off, and in February we were invited to participate in the 1st Surrey Junior Volleyball League organised by Surrey Volleyball Association (SVA).
In our U15 duels we were undefeated during the first round of matches after playing against Salesians (3-0), Spelthorne (3-0) and ACS Cobham VbDC (3-0). On the 5th June, at Egham, the last round of the U15 league took place. After a very thrilling day of volleyball, we came to the last match of the day in second position, just one point behind ACS Cobham VbDC who had played all their matches at that point. A line-up formed of Harry, Jack, Tom and Max, with the rest of the team cheering them on from the bench, played a very intense and close final match against Salesian School, which ended, after three extremely tiring sets, with a victory for Dunottar (3-0). We moved up into first position and were declared the winners of the 1st U15 Surrey Junior Volleyball League! A fabulous achievement for a team of beginners who, until a couple of months ago, had never played volleyball before.A quote from Haikyuu!! seems very apt at this point: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”.
The journey for volleyball at Dunottar has just started, and we are sure the Warriors will celebrate many more achievements in the future.
