New competition format to be implemented at schools volleyball championship
At this year's DSI Supersport launch
Sri Lanka Volleyball Federation (SLVB) will implement a model it created, following the junior structures of world’s top ranked countries, when the 20th DSI Supersport Volleyball Championship begins for 2020 from March.
This was revealed by A.S. Nalaka, the General Secretary of SLVB, at the launch of the 20th DSI Supersport Volleyball Championship 2020 in Colombo on Thursday.
“We have come a long way with this competition, and SLVB is really keen to bring up a system where all players, particularly in junior categories, get the opportunity to play and do not feel left out,” Nalaka stated.
Bolstered by the success at the 13th South Asian Games 2019 held in Nepal, where Sri Lanka claimed two gold medals in beach volleyball and two silver medals from the core format, Nalaka emphasised that SLVB now has a valid reason to structure out the junior age categories.
Volleyball, officially identified as Sri Lanka’s national sport since 1991, are currently ranked as 60 among 220 in Senior Men and 71 among 119 Senior Women, in the world. With the intention of moving further up in the ladder, SLVB has been observing on how the world’s top ranked countries negotiate with the junior categories.
“For a certain amount of period we managed to exchange designs and plans with top ranked countries such as Brazil, Poland, the USA, China and Japan on how they structure out the junior age categories. We understand the importance of this for many reasons. We did our model, taking into consideration all ideas gathered and discuss further with the relevant authorities, such as Ministry of Sport and Ministry of Education, before putting it to action,” he added.
Furthermore, Nalaka explained an obvious and existing component of the sport, where parents of players interfere into all matters at junior level. Volleyball is a sport played by six players per team and if a junior squad consists of 12 or more players, parents of the players who were benched or could not play, pull out their children and push them in to other sports where there is ‘acceptance’.
“There are instances when parents dominate the coaching staff and take matters into their own hands. This is ridiculous. It’s only killing the sport and its growth. We cannot be self-centred when playing a team sport. This is why we are planning to introduce the new structure, where a squad will only have 12 players and each time the six players score five points, they are replaced with the six on the bench. This system will also be helpful for coaches and school teams in identifying the best talent as the players reach the next category. This is how top ranked countries in the world create the strongest teams,” explained Nalaka.
The new method will give more opportunity to school teams as the organisers of the DSI Supersport Volleyball Championship 2020 expect more than 2000 teams in the Under-11 and Under-13 age groups in boys and girls segments. These categories will be conducted as ‘non-competitive’ in order to give the budding spikers the first hand experience of playing against an opponent, before reaching the real challenge.
The DSI Supersport Volleyball Championship will be conducted in Under-15, Under-17 and Under-19 categories for boys and girls and will begin from February 28 from the district level competitions. The number of teams will be pruned down at the national level competitions before it begins from April 27. The final stages will be held on May 24 and 25.