Georgia Tech Volleyball Camp

We just got back from an exciting camp at GA Tech! Our girls did awesome! We were put in the division with the big schools since we had such a great record last year, and believe it or not we hung with them really well! We got started on Monday afternoon and the girls were so pumped! They were cheering and yelling and working really hard. The coaches at GA Tech immediately started to notice their contagious spirit! We ate in their athletic dining hall for all of our meals. The food was great, unlimited and mostly carbs. Not so good for those of us who are not athletes anymore! Here is a picture of little Savanna. Nobody could believe that she ate so much but every meal she filled her tray and ate all of it!

Tuesday morning we started out a little rough, but the afternoon scrimmages were amazing. We played this game called WIN and that is exactly what we did-beating the best, and most athletic team there!

Tuesday night there was a coaches meeting with all of the coaches from the entire camp and all of the Ga Tech coaching staff! We played games on the pool table (which I won by the way) and then had a question and answer time. Here is how the meeting started.

Coach: Where is "Maranatha" ?

Me: Right Here.

Coach: How many kids are in your school?

Me: About 60 kids 7th-12th grade.

Coach: 60 girls?

Me: no, 60 total.

-(here insert a gasp from the other coaches in the room)

Coach: Everyone in here needs to give props to Maranatha. They are not the most athletic team here, but if you have seen them play you know what I am referring to. They have beat some of the best teams here because of their crazy energy on the court. They celebrate like no team I have ever seen before. When they score a point they don't have a one word cheer and high five, they have a party. They scream and yell and hug and jump up and down. Iwas trying to run a 6vs6 drill and it was Maranatha on one side and another team on the other side. I am used to just throwing in one ball after another, but when they were in the drill I had to constantly keep breaking up there celebration to continue with the drill. I love that! Everyone of you in here can learn from them.

He went on to praise our team for a few more minutes and praise some of our players individually as well.

It was amazing! I was floating on cloud 9 on the way back to tell the girls what had happened! And of course when I told them it was party time again in the dorms.

Wednesday was the camp tournament. We did not win, but we did beat the team that won the tournament during pool play!

When they handed out the awards for the tournament-they gave away the 1st place t-shirts to the winner of the gold bracket, the winner of the silver bracket received candy and then they said that they had to give away another award this year because they had one team that really showed how exciting volleyball should be. They called out our names and gave us each little GA Tech Volleyballs! It was really cool!

The next day in the coaches clinic the head coach went on to praise our team again to all the coaches in the meeting-it was so exciting!

Here are some pictures, I did not get any of them playing but here are some group pictures.