The past three months, much of my time has been dominated by this beautiful group of people. Volleyball season has been one of my favorite parts about teaching here. The girls are simply wonderful! Athletics and fitness in general are not huge here, especially for girls - so having a group that really works hard and enjoys being pushed is awesome.
We started our season in August, playing a couple of games before I went back to the states for Ryan and Emily's wedding in September. My assistant coach, Jack, took care of them while I was gone. He is such an asset. He's been here a year already, and is also the head of the PE department. He knows all the kids pretty well and has been a huge support to me through this new endeavor of living and teaching overseas.
We have had a pretty good season - 7-5 in conference play, 13-7 overall. Last weekend, we won our conference tournament! It is basically the equivalent of a district or conference tournament in the states - 7 teams. We came in ranked 3rd for the season, and won 4 straight games over Friday and Saturday to win the tournament. We ended up having to play the host team (who came in ranked 2nd) twice - in the 2nd round and again in the finals. They were hard fought games - but we won 3-2 the first game and 3-1 in the championship. Our girls played so well! Their defense was awesome - perfect serve receives and great passing in general. Our hitting was also really strong, and my senior setter did a great job without having any breaks for all 7 sets on Saturday.
We were awarded several individual awards for the girls. These were my top 4 players, who all got all-tournament. Diane (left) was the Best Server (and also an incredible right side with great passing, hitting, and back-up setting skills), Kris was the Best Setter (a unanimous vote actually), Angela was MVP (middle blocker with great net play, passes, and hits), and Seoyoung was my vote for best passer but ended up just with All-Tournament. I thought she deserved more - she played incredibly well - second only really to Angela, and then only because of hitting errors really. The three other players who also had a lot of time deserved recognition as well - Janice and Jenny, two seniors, were both stellar OHs during the whole tournament, and Jenny's serves and Janice's passing helped us out of many tight spots. Jaime was my first sub and in many ways should have been a starter - she's the best all-around player we have, good at everything. In this tournament she played both setter and OH, as well as a defense and serve sub. She's also subbed for middle when we needed it. She is amazing. I wish I could have used her more.
We also received the Sportsmanship Award - this one caught me completely off-guard. I think the girls are great and handled themselves really well, but the winner doesn't usually get this vote. I also told Jack before our games on Saturday that there was no way we could get the sportsmanship award, because I yell too much during games. So does he. :) But the other coaches all agreed our girls deserved it - which was awesome.
To make our win even sweeter, the boys volleyball team also won their tournament! They were expected to, as they have blasted every other conference team out of the water and won almost all of their games against the other division's teams as well. But it was still awesome that they came through. The boys JV team also won their tournament the same day, so it was a great day for the GSIS Knights. Unfortunately, all of us played our final game against the KIS teams - so it was not a good day for them. :) I have enjoyed having guys volleyball around - makes me wish we had it in Oregon as well! The St. Paul girls would have eaten it up and loved our boys team. :) The two seniors on the guys team are great people as well as athletes - I will miss them along with our four seniors.
Here are the girls with all their hardware - I'm so happy for them, and so proud of them! I will very much miss being their coach and miss coaching in general. Not having a team to work with for the rest of the year will be very hard. I have never yet faced a school season without coaching at least one team, so this will be a challenging time for me. Everyone here thinks I'm crazy to be sad about the season being over - but they just don't know yet how ingrained this is into my being. I have been given many suggestions of things I could do with my time - from grading other people's papers, to exploring more of Seoul and Suwon, to helping coach cheerleading. We'll see. :) Right now I am going to try to enjoy the time to relax, and hopefully work on getting back in shape. But I will miss these girls! They brought me so much joy, laughter, and light. I am blessed to have had this season and this time to share faith, volleyball, and life with some beautiful young women.
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