Champions - three times in a row....
Mood:
energetic
Topic: You and your thoughts
My son Jezza and his team mates - Jordie, Josh, Bert, big Cam, little Cam, and Alex - won the Australian National Volleyball Under 16 year Honours Championship. Added to that list of players is Jason the coach - he is (I am reliably informed) the best junior coach in our country. Jason is not much older than them himself but he is much wiser.
Winning the National title for your age group in the highest grade of Volleyball played is a remarkable achievement. But this team has done it all before as they have previously won the U15s last year, and the U14s the year before.
National Champions three times in a row - it is hard to get one's head around just what an achievement that is for this group of boys. Along the way they won three State Volleyball Championships in a row. Yep it goes on and on. Add to that some Beach Volleyball Championships and you can get the picture that these are "outliers" to the normal profile of success in junior sport down here in Australia where we take sport very seriously - perhaps too seriously.
Over the past three years this team has only been beaten once at any major tournament. They were beaten in the Round Robin game by the team they had to beat to claim their third National Championship. Everyone inside the team's support group and beyond were shocked that they were beaten yet not really surprised but more on that in a moment. After their loss the whole tournament was a buzz with the news that Jezza's team had finally been beaten in a close five set match. In fact his team had won more points over all but still lost the match.
The chattering clusters, clans, and tribes were full of the story about why and how Jezza's team lost. Everyone wanted to ask me about it. But all I could do was to confirm what they already suspected, had heard, or instinctively knew.
I told everyone who asked, including Jezza, that his team had shown absolutely no respect to the opposition. Even when they led in the fifth set I could sense that they did not respect their opponents. They got their buttocks kicked because of it.
In the final Jezza had his team focused, working hard together, and yet still confident enough to play their explosive game. In that match they proved to themselves and to the crowd watching that they were worthy champions for the third time. They also rediscovered that there is no magic pudding - there is no magic formula as to why they are the best.
They are the best because they train harder, try harder, and work harder for each other than any other team in their age group in the country.
What each of them has learned from this experience - over three long and often difficult years - is that if they commit, focus, and work hard for themselves and their team mates then successes like these will surely come to them for the rest of their lives....
Posted by richard-lipscombe
at 11:46 AM EADT
Updated: Sunday, 14 December 2008 12:41 PM EADT
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