Redbacks chase place at volleyball nationals
The Redbacks crew in Christchurch: Back row: Alister McKenzie (coach), Roberta Di Marco, Iona Tyney, Miranda Rae, Victoria White, Susie Wickham, Tamara Couper, Nicky Bain. Front row: Yulia Okhrimenko, Abigail Credo, Katie Cunningham, Abbey Greenwood, Sarah Diekema. Absent Richa Sacay.
There is still plenty of bite in the Marlborough Redbacks if recent results are any gauge.
The women’s volleyball side have set their sights on a place in division one at the forthcoming national tournament and have committed to attending various qualifying tournaments in the hope of making the grade.
On 25-26 July, they headed for Christchurch for a Southern Zone qualifying event, where they won all five of their matches to top their pool.
They travel south again on 15-16 August for the second qualifying tournament with the third and final qualifying event to take place in September. Their results at that event will confirm their final Southern Zone ranking for nationals – 1-5 will play in division one, 6-10 in division 2, and 11-17 in division three and four.
Susie Wickham, one of the Redbacks’ core players over the past few years, described the forthcoming events as “a crunch point” in their season.
“We are very much on track at the moment,” she said. “Division one would be hard to qualify for and we would be happy to play in division two, but, if we do badly at the next tournament, we would be looking at playing in division three or four, whose nationals are in Tauranga, whereas the division one and two nationals are in Auckland in October.
“Our results in Christchurch have put us in the best possible position. We are certainly going to give [reaching division one] a bloody good crack,” she said.
“It will be very tough, but we would like to be one of those teams challenging for those national [div one] spots.”
Susie said the team were “very passionate” about the game and their ambitions this year. There is a wide disparity in ages, “ranging from 16 to 17-year-olds to some of us in our early forties”, she said, quickly adding, “us older ones are just hanging onto the hope that we are never going to stop playing”.
She said defence was one of the team’s strengths.
“[Experience] means you can read play better, so while we may not be the hardest-hitting team, we can read play and adjust our defence based on that,” she added.
Alister McKenzie, who coached several of the more experienced players, including Susie, at Marlborough Girls’ College is the team coach. “He knows all our bad habits,” joked Susie.