New-look Team Northumbria men and women are already making rapid progress on and off the court ahead of the new Super 8s season.
That’s the verdict of head of volleyball David Goodchild following an intensive weekend of scrimmaging with Edinburgh University’s men and England junior women.
“We can’t set major goals or expectations just yet but we’re working hard to ensure we’re reaching our short term goals of where we, as a team, need to be,” said Goodchild.
“This will be a tough league this year with a number of good sides.”
With less than two weeks to go until the new Super 8s season, Goodchild is enthusiastic about how the men’s team is gelling.
“We spend a lot of time creating a culture, creating a team and understanding what we expect from each other including what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable,” he added.
“We’ve got a few new faces in the men’s team and a few in the women’s team.
“Over the last two week’s we’ve focused a lot on defence but we’ll be focusing more on offence and getting ready for the season in two weeks’ time.”
And Coach Goodchild had nothing but praise for how both the men’s and women’s team were approaching the new season.
“The women’s team have had an intense camp,” he added. “They were on court on Saturday, had a match Saturday evening, then back on court on Sunday morning and played again Sunday - mixed with a lot of team meetings going through ‘what if’ scenarios,” he added.
“They’ve been working so hard and both teams are a credit to Northumbria.”
TN women will be eager to get their season underway after losing to close rivals team Durham in the Super 8s playoffs last season.
The men’s team start their season at Sport Central on October 14 (4:30pm) against the Malory Eagles.
The women get their season underway a week earlier at Sport Central (3pm), starting on October 7 against the Pulsepoint London Orcas.
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