Our club is open to all pupils from S1 to S6. We train most lunchtimes and play all of our games after school. We enter all the local and National competitions, and would consider ourselves a reasonably successful school. We have been fortunate to have won a few of the recent Scottish Cups, and have had several players chosen for Scottish International honours at the various levels.
The basis for our club starts in the local primary schools. All teachers of P7 classes are given a copy of our ‘how to teach basic volleyball skills’ DVD, which was produced by our own PE staff. The teachers work for 10 weeks on volleyball, and then a full day Festival is held in our Games Hall, with approximately 200 participants involved in 2 v 2 games throughout the day. This festival is organised by one of our PE staff, Jennifer Evans, who gets one day per week to be our Primary Schools Co-ordinator. She is also involved in organising P5 Netball, P6 Basketball and P7 Heptathlon.
This year, once the P7 Festival was finished, pupils from the various schools were offered the option of attending our after school Primary Club which takes place one day a week from January until March. We are averaging 30 pupils per session. It should be noted that these sessions are unpaid.
We begin our own S1 Volleyball Club within weeks of the new term. We also organise the S1 South Lanarkshire Festivals which take place once a month, here at Stonelaw, from October through to March when we have a Finals night with trophies and medals. We also have schools form East Renfrewshire and North Lanarkshire participating. These festivals allow all pupils in a school’s volleyball club to attend. We can average 80 players in the early months ( 2 v 2 ), and finish with 3 v 3 games after Christmas.
Our grant money in previous years has allowed us to purchase 2 long volleyball nets, 4 sets of scoreboards, trophies and medals. This year we will use the money to buy additional volleyballs, plus medals and trophy engraving.
Alan Byrne
Stonelaw High School
