We've had so many amazing students develop a love for Volleyball this year and many teams competing in tournaments and competitions.

Senior A girls Volleyball

So PROUD! This word doesn’t even begin to describe the feelings I have towards this wonderful team of young people! It has been a fantastic 5 years coaching them. The road has been bumpy at times and there have been massive emotional and mental challenges to overcome as well as learning physical, tactical and strategic skills. I am so happy with their ability to come together and be resilient when things do not always go to plan (both on and off the court). I feel that the last 5 years of effort culminated in a fantastic win of not only their final game of 2016 season but also of the Senior A Grade in the Dunedin Secondary School Volleyball Competition. They all played incredible volleyball and united as a team where their hearts and bodies moved to the same beat!

Thanks to Coach T whose input has been invaluable over the last 2 years! A great friend and support to both myself and the team! We all really appreciate it! Thanks to all the fabulous parents who have supported their kids and encouraged them to be committed, motivated, respectful and kind people. It makes my job of coaching them so easy! I will really miss this bunch!! So much!! And know I now have assisted in helping others form a life-long love of volleyball and life-long friendships that I was fortunate enough to have when I went through high school.

2017 brings a new group of students in to develop and I am thankful to have these Year 13 students offering to come back and provide the future generation with coaches!!

Danielle Frost

Teacher Responsible for Volleyball and Coach of the Senior A Girls Volleyball team.

Senior Boys Volleyball - by Mica Goldsmith-Lonie

The Team: Oscar LaDell, Moshe Vincent, Josef Belton, Dylan Deans-Bennet, David Prime, Grant McNaughton and Mica Goldsmith-Lonie

2016 has been another fantastic year for the Senior boys volleyball team at Logan Park. We have a few new players on the team this season and we have all become good friends over the past 6 weeks as well as making significant progress in terms of our team performance. This season we have played some of the best volleyball I have seen us play in my five years on the volleyball team. Our most memorable game this season was beating Otago Boys’ High School 3-0, our whole team really turned up that day and gave 100%. 

Both Grant McNaughton and myself have being playing volleyball since Year 9 and back in 2012 and 2013 we had to play on the senior team as there were no other players our age. As we grew older we became the senior members of the team and it was our responsibility to rope in our friends to make sure that boys volleyball at Logan Park stayed alive. I have been so proud of the progress that the team has made this year and competing with these boys has been one of the standout memories from 2016.

Senior Girls B - by Lydie Leurquin

At the start of this year, the Senior B girls volleyball team was made up of year 13’s who had been playing volleyball for several years. Because we had played together in the past, we were able to develop our skills further as a team rather than individuals and we knew how we each worked which made it easy during a game to communicate. Because of this, we won every game in the first term which was an amazing achievement. But for our team, it wasn’t only about winning the game. Volleyball was a way for us to have some fun in our last year of high school and to not take ourselves too seriously in a sport we find enjoyable.

With the stress of the end of year looming upon us many of our original team did not wish to continue in Term 4 so this term was more about passing on our volleyball knowledge to the year 11’s, year 12’s and International students who will continue playing volleyball next year. This meant that there was a strong focus on the skills but also on the communication throughout the team as many of the students hadn’t played with each other before. Throughout the term, there were definitely signs of development in all aspects and we won our last game which was a great high to end the year and – for the remaining year 13’s – our volleyball career on.

A huge thank you goes to Ms Vella who has been an incredible supporter of our team not only in Term 1 and in Term 4 of this year but for all of the times over the years that she has supported the B team when there was no coach there. It has been so lovely of her to take time out of her Monday nights to come and make sure everything is alright and to see how our games play out. Also a big thank you to Mrs Frost for being the teacher in charge of volleyball whom, without, we wouldn’t be able to play the game we all enjoy.

Year 10 A team article - by Leah McDonnell

Girls volleyball was an incredibly popular sport during term four. It was so popular we could form a team with just Year 10 students in it. A Year 10A team consisted of Jahkoda Hunt, Leah McDonnell, Piper Mckerracher, Alice Houston-Page, Evie Freeth, Sujata Ritchie and Shamani Mcquillan. They were coached, and are currently being coached, by Erica Stedman and Kate Denys who give up their Thursday lunchtimes to teach the team drills, rotations, warm ups and techniques.

Recently a few members of the team participated in a Volleyball Refereeing Course. This course will prove to be helpful not only for refereeing for tournaments and games but understanding what the judges mean with various hand gestures. A National volleyball player, Des Kerekere, has been coming to after school practices and has been teaching the Junior teams how to complete certain techniques. Several players have come a long way after being taught by Des for only two x 1.5 hour sessions.

Junior Boys – by Daniel Cowles

During Term 4 Logan Park High School had enough boys to create a Junior boys volleyball team. This team included; Daniel Cowles, Matthew Cowles, CJ Barnes, Thomas Power, Colin McAndrew and Finn Lillis. We had a mixed season with about the same wins as losses. Overall the team really improved and started to bond well as a team. We still have a few rough edges to knock out as we gain more experience, and become even better. Hopefully next year we will still have enough players for a Junior Boys team or even two!

During the season, we also had an opportunity to play in the Junior volleyball tournament. This tournament went for the whole day and was full of action packed, fast paced volleyball. We had some additions to our lineup. Arnie Tregonning, Eamon Lupton-Wilson, Ziggi Kaitai-Martin and Lichen Sorrell. We had lots of fun! We ended up placed 4th in the Boy's division.

Year 9 A Volleyball team - by Isa Degas

After the volleyball trials at the end of Term 3, 9 enthusiastic members for the junior Year 9A team were selected. Throughout this season we made unimaginable progress, thanks to our two awesome coaches, Danielle Frost and Coach T.  On Mondays we played in the LPHS Development team, a mix between year 9,10 and 11. It was to help us develop better skills and provide us with more opportunities to play Volleyball. On Wednesdays we trained from 3.30 to 5.30pm and were extremely privileged to have Des Kerekere another great coach teach us some new drills and techniques. On Fridays we played in the Dunedin Secondary Schools Junior league, where we were taught rather complex court rotations. This six week intensive period of volleyball training has really helped the whole team especially on our overarm serves, spikes, warm up routines and rotations. It's been amazing to look back and see how much we've all progressed since the start of the term. We are all excited about continuing to play Volleyball and enter tournaments in the future.

Team members

Setters: ·Jorja Hutton ·Charlotte Murphy

Middles: ·Maggie Gorman ·Cristina Barriga ·Isa Degas

Posts: ·Cathy Zeng ·Helen Ruan ·Lisel Nader- Turner

Year 9B - by Carly McGavin

The 9B girls volleyball team was a joy to be in! Sure we lost most games and it would be a miracle if we won one rally but it was one of the most fun sports I've ever played in my life!! We really didn't mind that we were losing. I think we just enjoyed laughing our heads off when we missed a ball or inventing new ways to play the ball over the net last minute. We went to a sports tournament and we got to play volleyball for a whole day! It was so fun and we had some really good laughs and Isabel's cupcakes were the best. We didn't win anything but two days after we had our final game I could really see an improvement from all of our team. We only lost by two points, and we actually could serve the ball over the net and do some rallys. This was great because when our team first started I would be surprised if one ball got hit over the net from our team. All in all it was a great team to play with and we all would support each other when serving and hitting the ball over the net! 

Term 4 was a great term for our volleyball team and we had heaps of fun! Thanks to Stephanie and Briana for coaching us because we learnt a lot from you! Our team came together really well and we had a great term!

Team consisted of:

Carly McGavin, Mae Rose-Wills , Isabel Townsley, Stella Dickie , Danielle Sunitsch , Amelia Chang, Esther Tamati , Silva McDowell

Senior Girls A Tournament - by Jesye Hunt

On the 4th of April the Senior A Girls volleyball team set off to Christchurch. This is the 3rd Tournament the Year 13’s involved in the team have been on together. The Satellite Volleyball Championship tournament had 14 teams competing from all over the South Island. 

We had a number of very close games and ended up winning 2 games, which was an improvement to the previous years.

We all improved immensely in both individual skills and team work, which we had learnt from our coaches Danielle Frost and Mel Taurarii (who had just recently joined our team at the start of the season). We became better at reading the opposition, attacking and receiving formations as well as covering each other on blocks, tips and spikes.

All of us were exhausted due to the long days, short breaks and quick turn arounds between games. This challenged us a lot, and made us learn how to quickly get over mistakes and stay positive.

There were a few mental and emotional challenges we overcame in time for our final game of the tournament. With the encouragement and support of the other team members and coaches we were able to increase our positivity and were able to get our heads in the game.

I’m proud of how much we have improved in our skills and game play as a team individually from when we started volleyball in Year 9.

We had plenty of fun whether there were a lot of laughs, it is always an amazing experience every time we went on tournament.

We would like to thank Mrs Frost, Ms Vella, Mel and Simon for being there for our team, coaching us and making the tournaments happen. Even if you were only there for part of our experience or with us the whole time it still made a difference to us as a team.

Tournament Team:

Kate Denys, Jesye Hunt, Matilda Macandrew, Katharine Woolrych, Emma Hamilton, Emma O’Malley, Erica Stedman, Tayla Ward, Zoe Degas.

Junior girls – tournament – by Cathy Zeng

On Friday and Saturday 11-12th of September, the Logan Park 9A Volleyball team played in the Otago Volleyball Junior Qualifying Tournament at the Edgar Centre. In total they played five matches, with one close game that went to three sets. Everyone had lots of fun and learnt a lot. The tournament was a good experience.

The team were able to practice rotations and they improved each game. They are currently working on overarm serves and it's good to see more of them are going over.  We were taught how to use a more complicated scoring sheet than the one we're used to and picked it up relatively quickly. Altogether it was a great experience for all.

Players involved:

Setters: ·Jorja Hutton ·Charlotte Murphy

Middles: ·Maggie Gorman ·Cristina Barriga ·Isa Degas

Posts: ·Cathy Zeng ·Helen Ruan ·Lisel Nader- Turner

Volleyball Marathon - by Briana Buijck

During Term 4 we had a full on day of Volleyball from 3.30-8pm! We were fortunate enough to have a professional Volleyball coach Des Kerekere (Coach and referee from Wellington) come and join us for our practice. During these sessions we learnt new drills and did lots of practice on our serving, spiking, setting and digging. From my perspective, as a coach I learnt many new ways to coach and teach different skills. Afterwards we had pizza for dinner, and then had a Volleyball refereeing course with Tim Hulls from Volleyball New Zealand. Although it was a long day, it was great fun to get to watch other volleyball players techniques improve as well as my own. A huge thank you to the wonderful Mrs Frost for organising this worthwhile opportunity for many of the Volleyball girls and boys.