CHAOS volleyball thrilled for second season

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The Strathmore CHAOS club volleyball program is spiking into their second season and will try to build on last year’s success with the addition of two more teams to the group.
U15 White head coach Chelsea Nielsen is seeing promising progress at practice with the basic skill development and hopes it will continue into the matches.
“I feel a lot of potential with our girls,” said Nielsen. “Their heart is there so they’ll be right up there with the others I think. I’m a big attitude coach; you can coach the skills, but the attitude they have to bring. I think we have a good group of girls who are really optimistic and really love playing the game and are willing to try things.”
Nielsen added that what will help in team success is their willingness to help each other out on the court. Once the girls play together, that’s when the unity will show and certain roles will emerge.
“It’s a big mental game,” said Nielsen. “When you’re seeing those other teams, maybe they have a really great warm-up, they can be really intimidating. We don’t necessarily have the same opportunity that those bigger centres do and we’ll try to do the best as we can. They’re going to have to find their place in the first few games and the biggest thing is having those timid players come out of their shell and be confident in their abilities.”
From a coach’s perspective, she is going to try to be calm with the girls and focus on the positive things, and give them feedback on how they can fix errors.
U13 and U14’s coach Tiffany Callaghan is looking forward to the new set of girls who have played one another and are new teammates, expected to come together and gel as a team.
“My whole team, they’re multi athletes,” said Callaghan. “They play lots of sports so they have a lot of drive. Most of them have played a little bit of volleyball or have been introduced to the sport. They’re all pretty eager and excited.”
Callaghan’s hope for the girls is to increase their love for the sport and continue to play the sport whether it’s at a club level or school for future seasons.
“The girls are all pretty equal in their experience, which I think is a nice base point to start with,” said Callaghan. “Everybody’s running the race from the same start point. That’ll be advantageous for all of us. In practice and in tournaments or games, I just want them to come with their best attitude, wanting to be there and give their best.”
If nothing else, she would like to see the girls be better than they were the day before.
U15 Purple Greg Appleyard learned a lot last year about what it takes to compete at club level and knows his U15 Purple girls will have to continue to build on last year’s Nationals appearance to achieve more success this year.
“Last year was a Cinderella-type season,” said Appleyard. “Not that we expect the same results. We expect the same work ethic and you get results. It’s fun because you go from development to having more fun with strategy. The girls understand us as coaches and vice versa. It’s a lot more fun being able to push and what we’ve always said to the girls is depending on the level of commitment they give us, we will give them.”
He added that the main goal will be placing a focus on developing the girls individual skills and giving them a valuable opportunity to play volleyball in Strathmore. He said they are fortunate at the U15 level that they have lots of girls who want to play.
The other part of the changes for the CHAOS was a boys division. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough interest this year and the club formed a development team where they’ll get practice time twice a week, during which they will be able to work on basic skills and play three-on-three games.