Evidence that volleyball is booming at youth level will be provided by the Perth and Kinross Junior Open at the Bell's Sports Centre in Perth tomorrow. A record entry of 140 teams from primary seven upwards has been received with schools entering from all over Scotland.
Troon's Marr College has entered 19 teams and there are first-time entries from Aberdeenshire's Alford Academy, East Lothian's Preston Lodge High and Greenfaulds Academy (Cumbernauld).
The festival has been going since 1992 when 90 teams entered and the tournament has continued to expand through support from Team Sport Scotland and Perth and Kinross Council. The tournament will feature matches indoors and out and will underline the success of the festival format which has been promoted in recent years.
The Scottish Schools Cups were a casualty of the teachers' dispute of the mid-eighties but volleyball has fought back.
The game is again strong in the schools and the setting up of a junior national league at the start of last season has helped keep young talent in the game.
Another area where the Scottish Volleyball Association (SVA) has made strides in recent years is with Standard and Higher Grade courses for teachers.
The SVA have hosted eleven courses and a total of 265 teachers have gone through the system.
The most recent course held this month looked at improving tactics and technique in the game and also how to analyse performance.
In this way, the SVA is getting the message across in schools and it hopes to reap the benefit in future years.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article