Warmest congratulations to our men’s team, runners-up of the CUSAI volleyball league, and to our women’s team, 2009-2010 champions!

Those are well, well deserved rewards, the result of over five months of hard work. To top their qualifiers group and reach the semi-finals, the lads had to overcome Cork IT, IT Tallaght (ITT) and Galway-Mayo IT, the first two of which were especially tenacious. It was easier for the girls, who only had to play Galway-Mayo IT, who by no means were a match for them.

The semi-finals and finals were played in University of Ulster Jordanstown, Belfast, on Friday the 19th of March 2010 (yesterday). The lads met Trinity College Dublin in their semis, and won by two sets to one (NUIM 22-25 25-15 15-10 TCD) in an exciting match! On the girls side, we braced ourselves to confront IT Carlow,  very promising on the paper (top of their own group, winners to TCD by 3-0 and to UCD, former champions, by 2-1), and yet it came to be a clear, unambiguous victory of ours (NUIM 25-12 25-6 ITC).

The finals opposed NUIM to DCU on the men’s side, and NUIM to TCD on the women’s. Our lads could not overcome a very, very strong DCU side, whose superiority was indisputable (NUIM 10-25, 15-25 DCU). As for the girls, they found a real opponent in Trinity : that team had a great choice of players (6 on court, 4 on the substitutes’ bench!), advanced tactics (from one set to another freely shifting from a 6-2 to a 5-1) and fluid attacking combinations. They had the potential of stealing one set away from us, and although they came close to that result in the first set, it never happened : NUIM won by two sets to none, 25-23, 25-18.

So the outcome of the year is silver, for the lads, and gold, for the girls. The cup is home, and will remain there until next year. The direct contributors to those achievements were :

• Guilhem Gastal
• Keiv Reynolds (setter)
• Stephen Guyard
• Chidi Ubadike
• Mina Kelada
• Christian Henriques (captain)
• Bjorn Larsen
• Patrick Howard
• Brendan Smith
• Lincoln Wesley
• Joshua Galecki
• Jean-Jacques Le Roy
• Matthieu Hodgkinson (coach)

• Sara Hoolan
• Meegan Montgomery
• Anna Shemyakova
• Jessica O’Leary (captain)
• Meghan Grow
• Richelle O’Leary
• Laura Pulz
• Katie Burant
• Stephanie Moon
• Matthieu Hodgkinson (coach)

Thursday-participants, you also contributed to this success : you make the sessions enjoyable, you bring players along who reveal themselves as real assets in the CUSAI teams (e.g. through Adam, in the second semester, came Stephanie), and you might yourselves grow into players who have the potential to joining those teams. So thank you, and keep it up!

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support we received from the staff of the Sports Complex, in particular Pamela Lucas and Paul Davis, as well as the efforts of the Student’s Union to provide the club with the funding that’s necessary to its working.

Our major competition is now over, but there still is until the end of April to go with trainings, friendlies and a couple of one-day tournaments. Trainings will therefore keep running as usual until the hall closes for the exams.

Again very, very well done to both our teams, we’re all very proud.

Matthieu

I have arranged friendly games next Thursday to be played in our hall for both our CUSAI teams, who will be playing the Celbridge Philippians.

So as not to have our non-Tuesday players miss yet another session, I am booking the main hall from 7. Therefore, we’ll run the usual Thursday training from 7 till 8:30, and the warm-up for the matches will start then. Both matches will be played at once, one on each court.

I hope this will be okay with everyone. Take care,

Matthew

I find the group picture excellent. It’s a pity Bjorn had to hold the camera, but we’re all having a grateful thought. Thank you Bjorn

See you next week,

Matthew

I don’t know how many of you will be available on the 6th of June but anyway here’s the info… There is a beach vollayball tournament held in Herbert Park in Dublin on the 6th of June. Myself and Sara are normally taking part in it and Matthieu was supposed to as well but he’ll be in England…

ANYWAY! if you want to join us, feel free, it’s a 3v3 tournament (infos can be found here) and there will surely be enough people for us to find teams to join.

So enjoy your holidays till then and I hope some of you will join^^

See youz!

Stephen

The finals to the University League will take place on Wednesday the 1st of April in UCD.

The CUSAI has announced the schedule of the event, which you can find here.

So as to spare your resources, training in the sports hall will not be held the day before the finals (i.e. Tuesday the 31st). That leaves us with two practical sessions only, Tomorrow and Thursday, where will go through a revision of what we have seen the last few weeks. Attendance is therefore crucial.

On the other hand, I shall book a room for us on Tuesday evening in the Arts Block, so as to get the teams together one last time before day D, and clarify anything about the finals that needs be. I will send you a confirmation email when I have all details.

That’s it for now, see you tomorrow

Matthew

On Saturday the 14th of March, there’s a one-day tournament in Mountmellick to which NUIMVC can apply for men’s, women’s and mixed teams. We already participated last year and it was a great success, an event that everybody enjoyed.

Last year we had a men’s and a mixed team. This year, we have a greater attendance, especially with the girls, so I’d say we could register three teams: one men’s, one women’s, and one mixed.

In terms of cost, the club will pay the team subscriptions, and let’s say we’ll share the transport costs (which, if we drive there, shall not exceed 10 euros per player, as Mountmellick is about 80km away only).

The latest we can send the registration forms is on thursday, so I’ll need a speedy reply from you if you want to join! For the moment I just need names and word of commitment, no payment yet. (For those concerned, just note that it’s only two days after the CUSAI qualifiers before you engage in joining…)

Hoping I’ll read of you very soon,

Matthew

Thanks to all the people that supported the League Men yesterday in their two games, and congratulations to them for winning the first three sets of the day!

Simone took some nice photos, they can be found here.

Even though our Ladies are heading off for a friendly match against DCU this evening, there is still the regular Thursday training tonight. For some reason nobody (except Melanie and Simone) showed up last week…

So see you tonight and have a great day,

Florian

We were supposed to play the Dublin City University team (good standard, there) on Wednesday. Although we did not get any reply from them, and resultingly still do not know whether they are going to show or not, we have the sports hall booked for us that day from 4 to 5.30 pm.

I invite as many of you as there could be to put yourselves together in sportswear and join us for that occasion. If DCU doesn’t show, we’ll play matches between ourselves anyway.

This event is pretty much celebrated here at NUI Maynooth, and a buffet (!) is provided for those taking part in the event. As a result, it would be great if you could send us an e-mail if you are interested in coming, so that we can notify the catering department!

Cheers, I’ll see you around,

Matthew

In the end, the pre-league meeting will take place next Monday (Nov. 5th), from 9 to 10pm, in Classhall B in the Arts Block. I hope that it will suit all of you. After that, we’ll go for a drink at the Students Bar (it’s 3 EUR for any beer)!

I still did not obtain the definite schedule for the first round, but I’ll let you know as soon as I get a reply.

Take care of yourselves,

Matthew

All right, as you may know, the first round of the League should happen the week after study week (I still await confirmation), probably by its end (Thursday or Friday).

We have 12 male and 8 female players. For the girls, it’s ideal: all are sure that they will play a fair amount of time. For the lads, it’s professional: each player will have a substitute.

Still, we will have to decide upon the line-ups (who begins on the court, who substitutes whom, which position do we begin with…), and then we should practice with those, for each player to get used of his/her relative positioning, and other things as well.

As we may not have a League-training before then, I would like to set an extra session to get clear with all that beforehand. I am even thinking of booking a classhall, so we can sit down, take our time to lay down all issues that need be, and let players ask all questions they want, be it related to the rules, the workings of the tournament, etc.

The problem is that many of you may be away this week, so I am thinking that maybe we could work that out for Sunday, as with a bit of luck, all of you could be back. Therefore, I would like that all of you contact us to let us know about your disponibilities next week-end (3/4 Nov).

All right? Great, then I’ll read of you very soon.

Enjoy your break.

Matthew