My Skills Development In Volleyball: Reflection
Throughout our first unit in PHE in grade 9, we have begun with learning about Volleyball. This is one of the most well-known game sports to people. The game consists of two teams playing against each other, with each team having 6. In the middle of the court, there is a net that separates the two teams from each other so each half is owned by one of the teams. This sports purpose is to get the ball pass above the net and into the other team (opponent team) court. The point is given when the other team can’t hit it back to you successfully and get it to pass above the net or if it touched their floor in their own court, hence a score occurs for the other team. So I want to share my sports experience in the "My Skills Development In Team of Volleyball: Reflection Essay" paper. From my previous knowledge, players play the game until they reach the point of 21. However, there are some people who decide on a specific point to reach if they play, and if they all agree the winning point is the point that they agreed to. The skill that I have been focusing on this unit is digging skills.
The digging skill is one of the most important skills that is needed in Volleyball. The digging skill makes you able to bend your knees, put your arms straight in front of him and above of each other and close them to be able to hit the ball in power using both hands that are flat. The skills’s purpose is to prevent the ball from hitting the floor, especially when the ball is coming low so you bend and dig with power to get it into the opponent's court. The skill is used when a ball comes from the opponent team and is going low. Therefore, to be successful and prevent your team from losing a point, the digging skill is used so you can dig the low ball with power to send it back to where it came from. This skill was developed by doing a variety of different, great and beneficial drills at PHE class and at the house. The first drill is where you keep on passing the ball to yourself using the digging skill correctly. This can be played in two ways, either by yourself where you will begin with the digging position and dig the ball using your digging skills a number of times and count how many until you lose. The player loses if the ball gets out of his control or touches the ground. The player has to do the drill while moving, so they can’t stay in their spot because in the game they have to be in a ready position all the time and move from their space because they can expect anything at any time. The player will continue passing it to himself until he loses. If he reaches a high score then the next round he has to try to beat that high score.
The second way of playing this drill is to face a partner who is doing the same skill and give passes to each other using the diggins kill, however don’t force yourself to use this skill all the time because you won’t be successful however try to use the digging skill as many times as possible. This drill will benefit the players by letting them practice how to use the skill with another person, how to give power in the digging skill and how to transition from the digging skill to another kill in volleyball and back to the digging skill. This will help and benefit the player by making him able to feel how it is like to be in a game, even if this drill is partners, but this teaches them to be in ready position and think fast into which skills do we use to respond and this will help them very much throughout the game especially in the digging part because it will give them an idea on which time is best to do the digging skill and what times this skill won’t be the best to use. When you are successful at this you can step backwards each 10 passes that are successful and see the distance apart to practice your strengths and how you send the power to your partner.
The second drill is to group with as many people as possible who are practicing the same skill. They pick 1 advanced person to stand on the other side, and let him randomly toss the ball to any person to test how they quickly react and dig for the ball and the accuracy of their dig and quality of their dig such as the amount of power. They will do it for 5 people and then another person that they have passed to comes instead of him and does 5 times and they repeat their thing for all people. The person who will toss next will be chosen depending on how successful he is in digging the ball. The drill will make me move and be ready and give me experience on how the actual game may look like because I don’t know who will toss the ball to me, for this reason I have to be prepared all times. This makes me practice my distance so in the game the volleyball passes above the net. The third drill the player goes and faces the wall. They toss the ball to the wall, the ball will hit the wall and come back and the player have to bend down and receive it as a digging pass. I will do this as many times as possible, however each time I loose, the next time I have to get a better high score than the one before. I have to focus that it’s going to the right exact place where I am aiming it so in the class it will benefit me in playing games when I aim the ball in an exact place in the game so I can get a score for my team. I personally think that I have developed my digging skill in volleyball using the many drills that I did focusing into these 3 drills explained which lead me to be successful in many skills in volleyball not only the digging skill.
My team and I were communicating to have a good relationship with each other. We had to communicate and encourage each other by using many techniques, such as talking to each other, saying great job, giving them a thumbs up or smiling at them. We call our names when we are in practices so they are focused that the ball is coming their way and they have to react to it using one of the skills. This will benefit my partner because they will be focused, looking our way and will be able to react to the ball successfully because we warned him the ball is coming his way so he is in the ready position ready. Our relationship was cheerful and supportive. We would make our team confident about themselves even if they weren’t the best at it, when they did a fabulous we would say “Great job!” if they did a bad way of performing a skill we would come up to them closely so nobody can hear and tell them the improvement because maybe this person will be embarrassed and is sensitive so to prevent all of this we just go up to the person and tell him our perspective.
Our relationship was even better when the team stopped arguing and looked at the positive side that mistakes is a great thing to happen because you learn from it and at the end of the day we play not for the grade but for building skills. The team stopped fights and anger through the people. The team stopped being annoyed at people who fail performing a specific skill we don’t get annoyed we tell them their improvement and we show them an example of us doing it, and we help them master the skill, we help them by doing that by motivating them and giving them inspirational comments such as “Your great, you can do this!”. Even if some players are good in volleyball we still give them comments so they can use them as feedback. This builded up on my relationship with my peers and made it an enthralling and remarkable relationship. My team and I didn’t focus on the points and who wins, we focused on how we master the skills and how we as a group can collaborate in a fascinating way to defeat the other team. We taught each other any aspect of volleyball that we couldn’t understand so for example, there was a player that didn’t know how to serve and where so with my team we explained to her this aspect so she is able to understand. We had great sportsmanship. This relationship improves my ATL skills such as thinking, social, self management and communication skills. The social skills were developed by interacting with my peers. Such as listening to their ideas, having different conversation about feedback and ways of improvement. Listening to what they said instead of ignoring them, which is a very unrespectful behavior. Thinking skills were developed by reacting quickly to which skills do use in the game and had to think carefully about the skills that will be used to prevent loss and unsuccessfulness. Self-management was used when creating a schedule of practice was needed to improve the SMART goal. Communication skills were used when the group were communicating with each other and collaborating.
My team benefited my learning because I learned new ways to master skills easier such as the dig, before mastering the skill was difficult for me until they told me to bend my knees a little more and that will make things way easier for me. My team was giving me feedback regarding my volleyball skills especially the digging skills and told me the things that went right and things that went wrong. They told me the good things about me, they motivated me to improve and to try harder to reach my goals. They don’t ignore my mistakes, they actually use their time to teach me and explain to me how to master the skill, and that really benefited me in my performance. The hand position was hard to get used to at the start and hard to remember, however they still reminded me each lesson until the hand position was remembered.
The most significant part of our relationship that was fabulous is that we were all respectful, we didn’t get someone upset or angry, it was great that as a team, the feedback and improvements were understood and accepted and wasn’t taken personally. To improve next time, I think we first have to have high expectations on each other, I felt that some of us told specific people to go to a specific position for example, if someone didn’t know how to serve, we would make him be in the position after the serve so that person becomes the last person to serve so he doesn’t make the team lose, this made me sad, because believing in your teammates is important, everybody develops and improves in time and if the whole team gave specific people chances to be in areas where they can’t succeed with time and practice, they will have experience and master the skill.
With the team, next time everyone be in any position that they like, if there were two or more who want the same position then they have to take turns. Another thing in the team that wasn’t great was some people were left out for no reason, they just didn’t want to really interact with the team as much as others, I think that they feel shy probably, or probably embarrassed of their skills, for this reason, next time the team will make sure everyone is in the group and are all receiving passes in practices or having a chance to hit the ball in a game.
