NIC volleyball program offers youth skill camp, fun after-school activity
Even though NIC head volleyball coach Kandice Kelly has been busy recruiting players and holding offseason practices, she still finds time to help out in her community.
Kelly, assistant coaches and players from the 2011 North Idaho College volleyball team hosted an after-school volleyball program Feb. 8 at Christianson Gymnasium.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said sophomore Danielle Meehan. “I love coaching younger girls because I want them to feel the passion I feel about volleyball.”
Fourth through eighth graders participated in the program, which focused on volleyball fundamentals. The first session lasted from 4-5 p.m. and the second session from 5-6 p.m. although most of the participants stayed for the two full hours.
Kelly said she was happy with the number of kids that attended the program and hopes the turnout will be better each week.
“We didn’t expect it to be huge, but maybe in five years we’ll have 50 kids every night,” Kelly said.
One of the volleyball participants, Michaela, said she had a lot of fun and learned to snap her wrists when hitting the ball. She also enjoyed practicing her approach.
The first session started with calisthenics like back-pedaling and carioca, also known as the agility ladder drill. Then the participants began different drills like hitting, setting and spiking.
They learned to communicate with each other on the court by calling out different terms when the ball is about to be set.
“The same thing we did with these kids, we do at the college level,” Kelly said.
NIC volleyball players Sierra Pancho, Brooklyn Bradbury, Emily Sarff, Yang Yang and Shelby Lausen helped out during the two sessions.
Kelly said that at a young age volleyball players need to develop good skills, so the participants practiced through a lot of drills during the sessions and participated in life-like competitions.
One of the competitions involved the participants dividing into three teams. They had to hit the volleyball to themselves from one side of the net over to the other side without stopping. If the ball hit the floor, they had to do one push-up.
The process continued until every person on the team completed the drill. The team that finished the competition the fastest earned a candy reward.
At the end of the second session, the participants put all the drills into play with a game called “Queen of the court,” which was similar to an ordinary volleyball game.
For one child, the cost is $10 for an hour session or $15 for both one-hour sessions together. The money raised benefits the NIC volleyball program.
A child can be signed up by downloading a registration form from NICAthletics.com. Kelly will also host a camp this summer that will run from July 28 through Aug. 1.
