Scotland West Girls
The last single day session for the Scotland West Girls UK School Games team took place at Wishaw Sports Centre on Saturday 14th August. The day started with a training session taken by Thomas Dowens, Director of Coaching and worked on decision making and systems of defence. The team worked extremely hard in anticipation of their 1st competitive match v Northern Ireland.
After lunch the scene was set for an exciting match. Parents, friends and former UK School Games players came along to support and cheer the girls on. The team stepped on to court and immediately demonstrated power, commitment and a passion for winning and took the first set with a very convincing score of 25-10. A great display from the whole team brought about a 3-1 win for Scotland West and set us up well for the last training camp at St Andrews.
My thanks go to everyone that helped, cheered and took part in a very successful day.
Sandra Grubb
Head Coach
Scotland West Boys
The West of Scotland UKSG U-17 Men returned to Wishaw to continue the team development programme as we head towards the rapidly approaching tournament in Newcastle. The day saw all of the team continuing to work hard on the goals laid out from the start of the programme and after some cobwebs were cleared away the session produced great results from all.
The morning comprised of competitive practice and this was then featured in a match against South Ayrshire which comprised of 4 former West UKSG players and some others who are a tad too old for this competition. A great challenge was put up and identified some further development opportunities for this year’s team which will be addressed at the next session at St Andrews. A big thanks to the team from South for giving up their time to support the day as it was a great game and has helped immensely with the development programme for the team
Iain Parker
Head Coach
Scotland East Girls
Saturday provided a great opportunity for the East of Scotland girl’s team to measure its progress to date in preparation for this year’s UK School Games. The Northern Ireland team which will play at the games were opponents in a friendly match at Linlithgow at the start of the day. After a promising start for the East girls in winning the first set, the more stable Northern Ireland girls controlled the next three sets to win the match by 3 sets to 1.
It was great to have the Irish team with us and they must take great heart from their fine performance.
The Scottish girls can take some consolation from the fact that they were without four players including captain Sophie Hunter who might all be starting six at the games and the likely libero for the games was deployed as a setter for the first time in her short career. The players who were present now know though how much improvement is needed to be competitive in the coming UK competition.
Having picked up many invaluable indicators from the match the East coast coaches were able to concentrate on these aspects of the game in the afternoon. Much work was done on defensive positions and support and timing and positioning for the hit. As usual the group worked extremely hard and a lot of progress was made.
The team can look forward to a couple of mid week sessions now before the St Andrews weekend camp in two weeks time and they will undoubtedly be in really good condition for the exciting challenges of the UK Games the following week.
Vince Krawczyk
Head Coach
Scotland East Boys
Scotland East & North Boys had their first day session since the Inverclyde camp on 14th August.
The day started with the familiar 7am train journey or drive for the players from Aberdeen, whowere not willing to miss any training with 3 weeks to go to the UKSG competition!! They were joined by their team mates from Fife, Edinburgh, Stirling and the Borders.
The players worked hard on set block-defence situations, and on counter-attack patterns.
The squad were boosted by a visit from SVA Chief Executive Margaret Ann Fleming, who was encouraged to see the progress the players are making.
Ian Brownlee
Head Coach