| Hendersonville volleyball plays host to national elite camp |
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| Thursday, July 12, 2012 |
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This week, however, she saw one of her top goals come to fruition when the school played host to the Bob Bertucci National Elite Program Volleyball camp. Bertucci was a three-time Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year who took Temple to seven A-10 regular season titles and 315 wins and coached Tennessee to four NCAA appearances, three SEC titles and was named SEC Coach of the Year once. The National Elite Level camps that Bertucci conducts are described as a four-day training program including elements of individual, team and specialty training. Three sessions are dedicated to individual skill development. Three sessions are designed to improve the players' individual skills within their specialty, whether setters, middle blockers, outside hitters, opposites or liberos. The final three sessions focus on developing a complete understanding of all team functions using game actions drills and 6 vs. 6 competition. In addition, the camp works on weight training education and speed and agility training. “I think one of the best ways of describing the camp is back to basics or back to fundamentals,” King said. “I know when you’re coaching older girls you forget about the smaller things … and the camp has really strengthened our girls by re-brining up some of those weaknesses or areas that we forgot to pay attention to."
“They responded great,” King said of her team, which made up 27 of the 37 campers in attendance this year. “They’re learning a lot. Some of the girls you can see their eyes light up. They’re like little sponges just trying to take in everything they can. And they’re really receptive to hearing the coaching and how he instructs and using the information.” One of those 27 is Lady Commando senior Courtney Glover. “I know all the girls really like it,” she said. “It’s helped the younger girls. We’ve been working on a lot of technique, and for the younger girls that don’t really know the game it’s helped a lot. “We have eight seniors on the team and we’re stepping and leading and helping each other get better. It’s awesome. We’re bonding, we’re playing together. We’re doing 2-on-2s and trying to win. (Bertucci) puts the younger girls with the older girls so we can learn how to play together. A lot of the girls play club and you can just tell how much they’ve improved, but having this camp is only going to make us better.”
“It’s exciting to see that they could look at our facilities and say, ‘yeah, let’s try it out.’ With the way the camp was run, Bob was talking about hopefully they can expand it to an even larger camp which makes me feel a little bit more proud,” King said. “It’s not just me he’s looking at; he’s looking at my athletes. Are they respectable? Are they working hard? It’s not just me or the school bringing him in, it’s our girls.” CAMP AWARDS — Corby A. Yarbrough, Sports Editor Photos by Phil Stauder l THE STANDARD Top photo, Hendersonville's Courntey Glover bumps the ball over the net during this week's Bob Bertucci National Elite Program Volleyball camp at HHS. Middle photo, Bob Bertucci at this week's camp at HHS. Bottom photo, Hendersonville's Morgan Hutchenson sets the ball. |
When Kyla King was hired as Hendersonville’s volleyball coach last June she knew from Day 1 she wanted to have a national camp come to the school. There just was not enough time to pull it off in Year 1.
The camp was open to individuals, full teams, middle schools and high schools. Naturally, being held at HHS it was the Lady Commandos’ roster that had the most in attendance. And King says her girls performed well at the inaugural camp.
This is what King hopes is the first of many years HHS plays host to Bertucci’s camp. He had just one assistant with him this time around, but King said as the number of campers grows so too will the number of instructors. She would eventually like to see a staff of 11 or 12 come with Bertucci to accommodate the goal of 150-200 campers.