By their own admission, the Sacred Heart College Senior A volleyball team is in rebuilding mode this year, having lost a number of players as school leavers from the side that won last year’s College Sport Wellington Regional title.

“We have quite a young team this year, with no year 13s,” said coach of the ‘Sacred Heart Lions’ Nevo Siolo-Tuiletufuga. “Our team is mainly comprised of year 11s, who have been together since year 9 volleyball juniors. For these players, this will be the first time competing at Senior Nationals.”

The NZSS National Volleyball Championships are being held in Palmerston North from Monday-Friday next week, and, along with basketball, ranks as one of the biggest and busiest school court tournaments on the annual calendar.

Sixteen teams were divided into four pools for the start of this year’s CSW Senior Girls Regionals at Kilbirnie. Pool winners were Sacred Heart College, St Mary’s College, Wellington Girls’ College and St Catherine’s College.

As well as a new-look team, Sacred Heart hadn’t had much volleyball under their belts together heading into last weekend’s two-day CSW tournament.

“We hadn’t had many challenging games in the lead up to Regionals so each game we had at tournament prepared us for the next game as they got harder, said coach Siolo-Tuiletufuga.

Assistant coach Tessa Siolo-Thompson said “If there’s one thing about Sacred Heart that tends to be our superpower, it’s the teams’ sisterhood! Every year we have the previous years “big sisters” who have gone onto university or working return to help run the programme – further reinforcing the sisterhood. Some people use this term loosely – for us it’s a lifestyle.

“Above all else, it’s the one thing that lifts us when we are understrength, injured or lack confidence – we will battle with what we have.”

This paid off when they met Wellington Girls’ College in the final.

“We went through the tournament without a loss to arrive at the most intense three set final for both sides. At one point our captain Meleane Pole’o injured her foot. We weren’t aware how bad it was. She refused to come off so we thought it may have been a minor jolt. She went on to play the rest of the game only to collapse at the end. As we looked down we saw her ankle was swollen and purple.”

Wellington Girls’ College won the first set of the decider 25-15, but Sacred Heart came back to win the others to take the title.

For her efforts and inspiration, Meleane Pole’o was the tournament MVP, while Ashlee Yee, Sueanna William Ah Ken and Sydney Roma also all made the Star 7 players Tournament Team.

Said Siolo-Thompson: “Our sisterhood culture is second to none and the key component to our success of having won 9 Senior Regional champs and 5 Junior Regional champs. We have been at Sacred Heart 22 years as mentors, parents, influencers, trainers and coaches.

“The volleyball is but one vehicle we use to educate our young women in crucial life skills, especially relationship, communication, working under pressure, organisational and self-management. We love to win, but it’s not everything. Sisterhood far outshines the glow of trophies and medals with lasting relationships well into having their own families. Our granddaughter attends Sacred Heart college now, with another joining soon.”

Both Nevo and Tessa agree that their strength on court is more their hustle as a team over individual performance.

“We are the first to admit that individually some of our girls aren’t as strong as others, and it has been challenging for others even to pick standout individuals in our team because our ‘collective’ team strength is second to none. We prepare as a team. We win or we learn as a team. Our collective connectedness is our key.”

As Wellington Regional champions, Sacred Heart are the top Wellington seeds for Nationals, and are joined by runners-up Wellington Girls’ College and third placed Hutt Valley High School.

Sacred Heart are ranked 10^th, Wellington Girls’ 22^nd and HVHS 31^st in the 32-strong NZSS Division 1 tournament.

Rangitoto College are defending Senior Girls champions, with schools from their North Harbour region, along with Bay of Plenty and Christchurch always the strongest teams at the business end of the tournament.

The draw and pools haven’t been confirmed yet, pending more Regional qualifiers this week and weekend.

Whilst travelling to and from Palmerston North each day over the course of Nationals week is do-able, Sacred Heart will stay up there.

 “They stay in a holiday house to further reinforce their duty of care for each other – they are rostered to cook, clean and do laundry for each other during that week as a whanau/ village. Between games they have homework provided by the school and this is scheduled against the draw per day.

Activities are determined against the schedule, or the girls’ needs, such as they may need a soak in the pool or a dinner out away from the gym as it can be a bit much being and breathing the same air for what are very long days.”

For Sacred Heart College to compete to such a high level, they have plenty of support.

 “The school is extremely supportive of our whole programme of both juniors and seniors – we are very proud of our junior programme and they are the ones to watch also,” said Tessa Siolo-Thompson.

 “We are very fortunate to have Simone Naylor, our Sports director, and Katrina Kerr-Bell, our Principal, always supporting us with every available resource. We also have a very strong and uplifting parent support group who provide, transport, food/ refreshments and more where nothing is too much trouble.

“The girls fundraised by having a 10-hour Volley-a-thon this past Saturday where we had 10 teams play us. They are other school teams, club, church and family teams.”

The Sacred Heart College Senior A Volleyball team that won Regionals in Wellington and competing at Nationals in Palmerston Norths is listed below.

1. Meleane Pole’o
2. Sueanna William Ah Ken
3. Prezley Easthope
4. Ashlee Yee
5. Yasmin Holsted-Russo
6. TeeQueeva Ben-Tupuola
7. Jahzel Ben-Tupuola
8. Lanuola Pedersen
9. Sydney Roma
10. Mia-Loine So’otaga
11. Kayla Little

• Coach: Nevo Siolo-Tuiletufuga
• Asst Coach: Tessa Siolo-Thompson
• Trainers: Kiana Uriarau/ Jada Skipper-King/ Petrina Foaese
• Manager: Mere Tanidrala

Story courtesy of College Sport Media

Photo credit - TACKLD Photography