It was a full compliment of teams on Saturday 1st October as Freezone hosted its annual Spring Fling Tournament with 32 teams across 5 divisions converging on Netball Central in Homebush. This was the 2nd time we have had the chance to host an event at the new centre and it certainly brings with it an air of kudos with the facilities being top notch. An early start saw 9 courts in action and plenty of fun filled focus for a long day of volleyball. This year we had a large run on entries in our Men’s A Grade competition so there was a little jumbling of courts and mixing up the draw to accomodate for the top heavy mens competitons. We had our usual Mixed and Women’s comps and glad to say we still ran our recreational competition with teams forming around 2 weeks before the competition.
The competition ran on throughout the day and whilst there were some slip ups on the technical side of operating the systems from command central we managed to keep the schedule happening. Unfortunatley we weren’t able to maintain this into the afternoon with games running late and duty teams disappearing but most of the competitions did manage to make it through the day with every team playing at least 5 games! This meant that there were a lot of tired bodies around and about and this new formula certainly gave a great deal of volleyball play during the day.
One of the most promising aspects of operating a Freezone Competition is to get people into their first tournament experience. With the club expanding to a new membership maximum and our beginners level training on Sunday starting to have effects, many of the players in teams in recreational and men’s B grade were first time participants. This is a result that Freezone is very proud of – giving people the chance to have their first taste tournament volleyball and enjoy all the responsibilities of duty, turning around and playing games in succession and getting up at the end of the day to play that last game and play hard with vigour. To all those people who were recruited into teams, we hope that you were provided with a great first experience and that you will be back for more in the consecutive tournaments operated by Freezone and our sister clubs in Melbourne and Adelaide.
Special thank you to our tournament scorer Rafael Montellanos and to our committee, many of whom were involved in playing on freshly made up teams and giving our newer players some experience on their teams and providing leadership. We look forward to hosting you all again in February 2018 for our Mardi Gras Mixer!