Although my blog this summer has been all about my internship in Gillette Law Office in Redfield, SD... The next couple weeks will be a change of pace for me as I'm back in Marshall, MN working our SMSU Volleyball Program's summer camps. These camps are something we are required to do each summer as collegiate volleyball players at Southwest Minnesota State. It's a total of three different camps: Intermediate Camp (for younger & less-skilled middle and high school players) from Monday - Thursday of this week; Advanced Camp (for older/more-skilled players) from Friday - Sunday this weekend; and finally Team Camp (for high school teams) next week from Monday - Thursday. So... It's 11 straight days that are usually 13 hour days from 8:30 am - 9:30 pm!!! We finished Day 2 today and have a long haul ahead of us... And let me tell you, I could go for a foot massage already! Our bodies are all usually hurting by the end of this, especially since we scrimmage during our lunch and dinner breaks for an hour or so each time.
Pictured to the left is all of the campers in our Intermediate Camp this week - Which totals about 170 campers!
Pictured below is most of our coaching staff consisting of our 17 players, coaches and previous players/coaches that help work the camps every summer. We always have very good numbers for all of our camps with our good reputation and work ethic from year to year. Our head coach has very high expectations of us as coaches because we are providing a "customer service" to these campers that pay us to come and learn more about volleyball and become better players. Even though the days are long and it can get extremely hot... We always have to push through, keep going, and keep the faith and energy up for the campers!
Pictured above is a few of our players performing a demo of a skill for all the campers to watch. We do a lot of training in all the skills of volleyball as a whole group (like in this setting), but also dispersed out into smaller groups on each court with a few coaches. We have 8 courts set up in the RA Facility gym and 3 more courts up in the PE gym, so we have a lot of court space which is helpful! This year, I have been in charge of running my own court because I'm a senior (and older with more experience at this), and coming up with different drills and ideas on my own can be stressful and difficult sometimes. But, I do believe experiences like these will help me in my future careers also. My patience is tested every year with these little campers, but it can be a very rewarding job at the same time too!
That is so awesome that you are doing an internship in Redfield. I work in Miller so not to far from me!! Volleyball camp looks so fun! I use to go there when I was a kid for volleyball camp. It was really fun!
ReplyDelete