UEL Women’s Volleyball First Team have enjoyed another excellent campaign which has seen them finish top of the BUCS Premier South for the second successive season. For coach Jefferson Williams this was his first full season in charge, where he has taken talented individuals and moulded them into a dominant force as a collective.
During the season, UEL won eight of their ten league matches in straight sets dropping just four throughout the entire campaign. With nine victories and only one defeat, away to closest competitors Essex most recently, UEL will be hoping to continue that good form into the play-off matches just around the corner.
In an exclusive interview with Rising East last week, Williams sat down to discuss results, performances and what lies ahead for the women’s team before the curtain closes on another season of sport at UEL.
Out With The Old
Over the summer break, the volleyball programme saw a high turnover of players. Some familiar faces remained, while fresh talent was brought in to strengthen the squad ahead of the 2017/18 campaign. Williams revealed how they went about shaping the team as the season progressed:
“First of all, there was a need to bring in some players and I think our recruitment went quite well. I suppose the word of mouth and just having contacts in the right places, we brought in a number of Americans to supplement the two or three starters we had coming back from last year. It has gelled quite well.
We hit the ground running and had a very successful first part of the season, only managing to lose one match against Essex, where we were missing our starting setter and had to reintegrate the starting setter from last year. We also had a couple of other little injuries, but again it’s nothing that we havn’t been able to manage.”
Perfection
A run of five games without dropping a set could hardly go unnoticed. This was a remarkable achievement from UEL who were proving to be defensively resilient as well as impressive in attack. Williams acknowledged the quality of his players and praised their ability to carry out game plans:
“They came in as fairly good players, so we have a system in place where it was just a case of trying to integrate players that came in to the system. Teams play a fairly standard system, it’s just a case of how they manage the court, specific areas they try to block and that depends on the opposition you are playing against.
We havn’t really had to be that specific against anyone, the only time was the Essex match when we played them here. We realised that they were the main competition, and we wanted to make a statement, so we prepared a detailed game plan which the girls executed to perfection.”
After losing 3-2 away at Essex in their final league match on February 7th, the chance for UEL to go ten unbeaten slipped from their grasp. Reflecting on this game, Williams identified the key areas his side will be working on in the coming weeks:
“We definitely had some problems with service receive, that broke down and once that happens it is difficult to run the offence. Our block defence didn’t function as well as it had done during the season, and part of that is also we didn’t serve particularly well either.
Putting all those things together, I think those are two main areas. First contact, tougher serve, sort our block defence out and make sure that our first pass is good enough for the setter to run the offence that we know we can and would like to run.”
Beyond BUCS
With the BUCS Championship quarter-finals fast approaching, UEL have been involved in ‘scrimmage’ matches against club sides in the London area. Williams reflected on these positive preparations despite not having every player available:
“Part of what we’ve been trying to do as we move into the play-offs is to look at playing some of the Super Eight teams that are based in London. So far, we’ve played three matches against Polonia and Surrey Orcas.
I think we’ve done very well even though we’ve not had a full squad available because two of the girls, one plays for Orcas and one plays for Polonia, so we tend to give them opportunities to play with their club side as well. In addition to that, those three matches that we’ve played we’ve only gone in with one middle blocker, so the three middle blockers have not been available for any of those matches.”
‘Always Striving To Be The Best’
At the time of writing, UEL were awaiting confirmation of their quarter-final opponents with the game scheduled for Wednesday March 7th. One thing for certain is that UEL have a coach who places huge confidence in his players, setting the bar high to ensure they are always striving to be the best. Williams considered the opponents who may stand in UEL’s way should they progress through the quarter-finals:
“Whoever it is I’d expect us to come out of that on top, that I think would lead us into a match against Durham who are the second placed team in the North. Once we get past that then it’ll be the all-conquering Northumbria.
I suppose at the start of the season we figured that if everything went to plan it would be Northumbria and UEL in the final. So far, nothing I’ve seen has given me reason to think that won’t be the case.”
Almost a month has passed since UEL’s last competitive fixture. However, training sessions and scrimmages have provided plenty of opportunities for the team to prepare for the final stages of the campaign. With a tremendous run of form behind them, and the continuous support of their coaches and UELSports, the women’s team have every chance of making this another memorable season for the Volleyball Club.
