After focusing on our fitness for most of Term four, with a few Monday games and training sessions, we were prepared for an awesome Term one of Volleyball for 2019.

We were lucky enough to have a friendly tournament arranged with Waimea boys and Nelson boys. Thanks to Ben Laing’s family we had accommodation sorted and could settle in to 3 days of Volleyball up in sunny Nelson.

By versing disciplined and structured teams it gave us an idea of what things would be like during the up-coming season. It gave us goals to aim for and enabled the team to play some competitive games. During our down-time we had some great pool sessions and a trip to the legendary waterhole. This added to our team bonding and finished the trip off with a BBQ by the river. Good times.

Moving onto South Island Champs in Christchurch we played our games at Cowles Stadium. We won 2nd division, coming out undefeated winners. The boys played some of the best games yet as a team and being undefeated added to our motivation moving on to the Canterbury Champs in just a week and a half.

We played some competitive Volleyball in that tournament and worked our way into the 3rd and 4th play-offs. The result, unfortunately, was a five set loss to Lincoln. This was played in front of a great crowd, and put us in 4th place overall.

The National Secondary Schools Volleyball Champs is always the highlight of the season. Played in Palmerston North it gave us a whole week of games. This was some of the most fun we had as a team and was a great way for the three seniors on the team (Toby Barker-McMillan, Ryan Martin, and Liam Rainbird) to finish.

The social went ahead this year and was a perfect way for the boys to relax. We expressed our inner lumberjack side in true style with great costumes all round.

Cheers to a great injury-free 2019 season.