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By Neto Baptiste
Chris Wilkins, head coach of Humber College Women’s Volleyball in Ontario, Canada, believes that a number of the young players currently enrolled in an ongoing one-week camp here, have the potential to play successfully at the college and university circuits.
Wilkins is part of a two-member team, which also includes Mandi Doris, a past professional player in Europe and a 10-year assistant coach at Humber College, currently running the August 25-29 camp being hosted by Dynasty Volleyball Academy at the YMCA Sports Complex.
“I coach the female side in Canada and I have a few coaches both on the men’s side and I was already sending them texts last night saying you got to see some of these kids. They’re a year or two away and you know it’s just a matter of getting some more exposure and getting them to see what those different levels are like,” he said.
“I heard when I got here, that the men’s national team had qualified and is out in Mexico competing right now. The associations need to put that kind of resources into bettering it and having these type of programmes, not just us, but having any of these kind of programmes is just going to make kids better because I watched from last night’s practices with both the under-23 and the women’s national team, there’s at least a handful of kids on each that can go on and play college or university and be very successful,” he added.
Meanwhile, Doris outlined some of the areas they will be working on through the camp with over 30 enrollees.
“Although volleyball highlights are people spiking the ball or attacking the ball very hard, fundamentals like passing platforms and technicalities of your body stance and what you do with the ball, so your decision and cue reading, we’re working on those kind of fundamentals just to build and improve what the athletes already have. The athleticism is very good here; everyone is very athletic, so we’re just working on those fundamentals of the volleyball technique, because volleyball is very technical, like a very technical sport. But yeah, the fundamentals and the basics of passing and volleying and movement with your feet and what to do with your body when the ball comes to you,” she said.
Head of the Dynasty Volleyball Academy, Farida Isaac-Carr, said the initiative would not have been possible without the assistance of the Antigua and Barbuda Amateur Volleyball Association (ABAVA) and its president, Wilbur Harrigan.
“Mr. Harrigan, who’s the president of the Volleyball Association, said ‘whatever experience and knowledge that they can bring, I’m in full support’. So he went out of his way and he said, ‘I have your back in any which way you want to’. So the association has stepped up in terms of actually supporting their accommodations for while they’re here; and the facility without any kind of pay or stipend or anything to maintain and they said, once we can expose our youth, the under 23 men and boys to this experience, it will be better for us to grow,” she said.
Wilkins and Doris will also assist in training the Antigua and Barbuda female national team, which is preparing for an upcoming tournament in September.
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