Coyotes host volleyball camp before season begins

Just one week before high school volleyball teams began tryouts, many players spent three and a half days at the Coyote Volleyball Camp hosted by the Centennial Coyotes volleyball program and Club Zia.

For the first two and a half days, underclassmen filled the gymnasium to get a fresh start to the new season and back into volleyball mode. They spent 15 hours going through multiple drills for passing, hitting and serving as well as running through some offensive attacks and defensive strategies. The next two and a half days were strictly devoted to the upperclassmen.

There were 130 camp participants, including boys and girls.

“We always open up our camp to any interested players and hold it the week right before tryouts because this is a good time for the kids to play who may not have touched a ball all summer long,” Centennial head volleyball coach Carly Bourland said.

There were eight kids assigned to every coach. This gave them the opportunity to work on specifics in terms of skills.

“Each camper was given the attention they needed in certain areas,” Bourland explained.

Bourland, Eric Hodgson, Meredith Nelson and coach Jaime were the instructors of the camp while many previous graduates associated with Club Zia, including Gatorade Player of the Year and Arizona State University volleyball player Sarah Reeves, were court helpers on hand to lend their instruction.

“It is also great to host this camp because you can see what else is out there in the volleyball world,” Bourland said. “We had 17 girls from Centennial as well as others from Sunrise Mountain, Cactus and Mountain Ridge high schools.”

Bourland said the goal of the camp was to get as much practice and skill as they could in six hours.

“We just wanted them to have fun,” she said. “We did not want to torture them because that is what tryouts are for.”

She said the camp is fun because she gets to see all the kids again and gets everyone back into thinking about volleyball.

“We get back into drills and all get to see each other, so it’s great,” Bourland said.

There was a lot of game playing and drills were also mixed in.

“We would work on a skill and then switch into game mode and apply what we just learned,” Bourland said.

The Coyotes host the camp every year right before tryouts and hope to get many more participants next summer to get the players ready for the upcoming season.