Each year we ask a number of our young athletes to report back on their volleyball experience, today we focus on Heidi Bright (England No. 8), as well as representing the SW Region in this years IRC and the IRB events, selected to represent England at this years U17 Nevza (North Europe Volleyball Zone Association) competition in Ikast, Denmark.
I was really proud to be a part of this experience and getting to be part of the squad. I worked really hard to get to where I am and had a really amazing time in Denmark. I’m really glad I got to experience this competition with some of the people I have worked with for many years and am very grateful for the opportunity we got to progress together as a team.
Our flight to Denmark was on Sunday 16th October at 4am. Many of the athletes decided to drive up the night before because of this very early start and due to this our head coach for the cadets – Darren Lewis, decided to schedule training the evening before our departure, at 5-7pm. This training helped the team to get used to playing together before we left England for our first few matches.
We were all very tired waking up so early but equally excited to travel to, for many of us, myself included, our first international competition. The flight was just over an hour, and then another hour’s coach ride to the venue and many of the players slept on the way. It was interesting to see a glimpse of Denmark before we arrived at the venue.
The matches didn’t start until Monday morning (the next day) so we decided to train in the hall to get a feel for the floor and size of the hall before we played. It was amazing to see the facilities that the players here had and we were all amazed by the venue.
The walk to the hall from our accommodation was only 5 minutes, and although we were all freezing in the cold weather, we got to see some of our surroundings on the way.
To see what we would be playing in for the next few days had made the whole team very excited for the days to come. After this, everyone on the team was nervous, but ready for our first match.
All of the teams stayed in the same complex, it would normally be a school for sports, but the teams fitted in nicely for the week. There were 6 people in a room, and I’m sure you can imagine how difficult it was to manage our time and get enough sleep effectively, but it was nice to be able to spend time with a large part of the team for the short amount of time we spent together.
Our first match was the next morning, it was against Iceland. We were very nervous to play against them because we knew that they had won the tournament last year, but we had analysed their play before the game started and made sure to prepare accordingly. We managed to play one of our best games and won 3-0, this put us in a very good position, and gave us confidence for our second pool match later that day.
After eating lunch, we rested for a few hours, most of the team slept to prepare for the game later. We were all relatively tired from the match earlier in the day but managed to put out another good game against the Faroe islands, winning 3-2.
It was an impressive game but was also the most exhausting. We won the first two sets and were confident in our play but after the Faroe islands pushed back in the third set we almost lost hope for the match. Pulling ourselves back in the fifth set was difficult, and we were proud of our resilience.
After both of these tough matches, we all wanted to sleep fairly early. So, after dinner and a meeting about the next day’s strategy and reflection on the day, we all went to sleep pretty quickly.
When Tuesday came, we got the morning off. Due to the fact that we came first in our pool the day before, we were straight through to the semi-finals, and just had to wait to find out who we were going to play.
When we found out that we were going to play Sweden, we did some analysis on their play and went into the game rested and ready to play. However, this was our toughest game yet, and after a tough battle, Sweden managed to come out on top with a win 3-0. Our team put everything on the court that day, and although the score doesn’t show it, it was our toughest battle. We were all grateful for the opportunity to play against such a high-level team that went on to win the finals.
We knew that we had to reset and prepare for the ¾ playoffs that would take place the next morning, and all of us really wanted to win a bronze medal.
After a good night of rest, we woke up to hear that our play offs would be against Iceland, who we played and beat in our first match. Even though we knew this we were still sceptical going into the match because we knew that Iceland had improved their game since the last match and knew our game strategies now.
We spoke about our new game plan and went into our fourth match prepared and ready.
Although we were confident, due to a rotational error in our first set which threw our rotations off for the whole set, our mindsets were broken down for the rest of the match. Iceland stepped up their play and managed to win 3-0. The team was quite disappointed with this result but stayed positive after all of our hard work getting there.
This was our last match together as a team and we were all very emotional when the tournament came to an end for us.
Regardless, we watched both the men’s final (Denmark v. Sweden) and the women’s final (Norway v. Sweden) and were impressed by their play.
We ate dinner and packed our belongings before getting on the coach and heading back home. The flight on the way back was delayed by an hour so we ended up not making it into England until 2am and most of the team was very tired after a long few days of playing.
I thought that NEVZA was an extremely valuable experience for me as a player because I developed and learnt so many new things in the few short days I spent there and played at a level I had never experienced before. I also really enjoyed spending time with people my age who share the same passion for volleyball as me and look forward to many more possible experiences similar to this in the future.
Heidi Bright
For more info on Nevza and match videos, see:
