The South East Volleyball Association recently held its inaugural teachers versus students volleyball night.
Twelve teams from four local schools including St Martins Lutheran and Tenison Woods colleges and Grant and Mount Gambier High Schools attended to play a round-robin style event.
The event took place in the Mount Gambier High School gymnasium and South East Volleyball Association president Ben Clark said the night was a huge success.
“It was really good, it was well-received and well supported. The response we had from everyone was just an overwhelming success,” Mr Clark said.
“Last season, one of the committee member’s daughters came and watched a night’s volleyball and saw some of her teachers playing for one of the teams and said ‘I’d love to play against my teachers’ and that kind of planted the seed for us.
“We have so many teachers already who play in our league and kids from around the local High Schools, so we thought we’d try and do a night where they could enjoy themselves and have a bit of fun.”
Mr Clark said they kept score, however they did not have overall standings, with the night an opportunity for students to have fun, play matches against the teachers and mix with students from other schools.
“It was fun watching them, I umpired a few of the games and one of them I saw Mount High teachers against Mount High students,” Mr Clark said.
“They were all having a laugh between each other and Mount High have some outstanding volleyball students and the male teachers started to hit a few big shots.
“So the Mount boys quickly put them back in their place with some even bigger shots and the Mount teachers kind of took notice of and thought ‘okay, we’ll take it easy now’, they realised they were a bit out of their depth.
“We had a couple student teams play each other, there was a game where St Martins played Tenison students and we were on the other court umpiring and it was so loud the atmosphere behind us.
“It was like they were playing for a grand final spot or something, the atmosphere was just amazing.”
Mr Clark said the association planned to host more teacher versus student nights in the future.
