Saturday, November 20, 2010

Williston High School Volleyball Team Comes to Project Coach

Amidst some initial confusion, the Project Coach youth coaches were shown a short video of a game the girl’s volleyball team from Williston High School in Easthampton. Both the Williston players and the youth coaches then headed towards the gym where the Williston players brought the youth coaches into three rotating groups and taught them how different components of the volleyball game such as bumping and setting. The captain of the volleyball team explained that “a big part of volleyball is cheering”. The excitement and energy was palpable as each group of high school students screamed out the number of passes they had made without dropping the ball, each group competing against each other. “I’ve got it”, they would tell their fellow teammates, communicating with each other in an effort to keep the ball in the air. Once everyone was back in the Chestnut Library the youth coaches and Williston students paired up. For the first three minutes the Project Coach youth coaches explained what they do at Project Coach every week.

Youth coaches answered:

“We are role models to little kids.”

“We coach the kids, which is hard but fun.”

“The kids are rambunctious.”

“One Thursdays some of us have SAT prep.”

The Williston students then spoke of their average day:

“It’s a boarding school so I live in a dorm.”

“We have six classes a day and one free period.”

“School ends at two but sports go on until five thirty.”

“From eight pm to ten pm we have study hall in our rooms. It sounds horrendous but I get my work done”

“The main difference between private and public school is the workload. When I came to Williston from a public school it hit me real hard. My grades weren’t too hot.”

“Students come from all around the US. That girl sitting over there is from Chicago”

“We go to school every other Saturday from eight thirty am to eleven thirty am."

When Sam Intrator asked the group of coaches and Williston students to raise their hand if they were fluent in two or more languages, four Williston students raised their hands while more than seven Project Coach coaches’ hands were raised.

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