Physical Education teachers and coaches from a total of thirteen (13) primary-level schools in Kingston and St Andrew participated in a coaching clinic staged by the Jamaica Volleyball Association (JaVA) at Jesse Ripol Primary on Tuesday 23 September 2014. The clinic was held to help the coaches with the preparation of their teams for the JaVA/Phillip Greenland Developmental Volleyball Championship, which will serve off in late October 2014.
After giving the coaches guidelines on how to best impart the various skill sets of volleyball to children, lead coach, Mr. Steve Davis, gave the coaches an impromptu challenge to practice the lessons learnt on a class of Grade 5 students that had a PE session while the clinic was going on. The children provided the coaches with very realistic challenges because none of them had ever played the sport before. Davis, who was been the lead coach for the primary-level schools programme since its 2010 birth, emphasized the importance of teaching the children to try to control the ball at all times, as oppose to viewing the ball as something to hit as hard as possible.
Major Warrington Dixon, Java’s School Development Manager, expressed delight with the relatively large turnout of schools for the clinic. “One can always want more but I struggle to recall a turnout this high for any of our previous clinics for his competition since its inception in 2010. We have had highs of fourteen (14) schools participating in the actual competition in Westmoreland and St Ann but the representation at the clinics is usually less. This makes me even more excited about the prospect for this zone, which has had only one school participate in the four year history of the competition. In fact, so far, nineteen schools have indicated that they will participate in the competition, and that may yet increase.”
Each participating school was presented with two Molten ball courtesy of the North, Central America and Caribbean (NORCECA) Volleyball Confederation. JaVA has had no financial sponsor for the Championship and is still seeking to attract corporate support to help develop the sport.
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