Ryan Graham, Observer Reporter
The Quesnel Cobras girls volleyball team are committed to bringing back and building up the sport of volleyball in Quesnel, to where it once was.
“We are just trying to get volleyball going again in the city,” Coach Amber Carriere said.
“I know there use to be some really competitive teams here so we are trying to build it back up.”
The club recently held a spring camp March 21 – 23 at Quesnel Junior School in hopes of building support for the sport.
“We really want to bring volleyball back to Quesnel and a camp like this is the first step,” Head coach Dillon Dixonchase said.
He said the team lost their program due to a lack of coaches but are in a good place now.
“There wasn’t enough coaches for the club program so it went away for a while,” Dixonchase said.
“These girls I’m coaching now were in the under-15 category last year and now they are at the under-16 level.”
The team consists of 12 players who are all from Correlieu and compete from January to May. He says they are always trying to work the rotation in during games, but there are instances when they do not rotate.
“We follow a fair play policy for round robin games and once we get into our elimination tournaments we tend to be selective to put the best team on the floor, but up until that point everyone gets to play,” Dixonchase said.
The team has gone through a lot with coaches and systems always changing.
“These girls have seen quite a few different changes in previous years so it was a bit tricky for the girls to adapt to our current system,” Dixonchase said.
“I’m a very defensive orientated coach so we worked really hard on becoming a strong defensive team.Some areas we worked on were serving, passing and blocking.”
He added they worked with the girls on unspecializing them and taught them different positions.
“We saw it was an issue so we moved the girls around which allowed them to learn different positions,” Dixonchase said.
“We then worked on being a strong defensive team which worked out very well for us. When we went to our first tournament we were probably the strongest defensive team there and received many complements and now we are working on improving our offence.”
Dixonchase says volleyball is an excellent sport for people to play.
“I like it because of the simplicity of the sport,” Dixonchase said.
“It’s three hits on each side and you don’t have a stick or a bat. It’s just you and the ball. The sport is also great for having fun, getting your exercise and is also easy to pick up.”
The hope moving forward is that the sport of volleyball in Quesnel can grow to what it once was, but the first step is building a foundation of young players which the Cobras believe their spring camp will provide.