Volleyball: Napier pupils islands in the stream

NGHS pupils Mia Pemberton (left) and Laike Baker will forgo school allegiance to represent their respective North Island volleyball teams from today. Photo/Paul Taylor

That's the thing about volleyball - you are spiking each other one minute and the next you are exchanging high fives, fist bumps, hand hugs or awkward shakes when proceedings are dusted in the courts of contention.

"It's fun and a good challenge as well meeting heaps of new people," says Laike Baker before she and Mia Pemberton represent North Island 2 and 1 under-18 women's teams, respectively, in the Inter-Island Challenge in Napier from today.

The under-19 men, with Napier Boys' High School pupil Sean Monaghan in the North Island outfit, are also competing until Sunday at the Pettigrew-Green Arena, Taradale. Admission is free.

The teams were named last night after their final training sessions at the arena for a weekend that also offered workshops on nutrition, movement quality and strength education yesterday.

"When we get on court we're not friends, we're enemies," says Baker with a laugh.

While most players are familiar with each other from past tournaments it's always a challenge in itself to find a degree of cohesiveness to function as a unit.

"At the start we were just like nervous and we were playing our own game and then later we got more confident," says Baker as she and Pemberton embark on their maiden outing for their island teams.

For Baker the hosting rights mean her family members don't have to travel far to watch her compete.

"The last tournaments were all around New Zealand," says the 17-year-old who is an opposite setter who tries to spike from behind.

Her mother, Kirsti Baker, had travelled to Wellington and Nelson to watch her compete against their Australian age-group counterparts.

The former New Zealand under-16 representative broke the three-year trend of making Hawke's Bay age-group teams this year because of commitments to school work and netball for the NGHS Senior A team as a goal attack in the Super 8 competition.

Her first flirtation with volleyball began in year 9.

Baker, akin to Pemberton, has lapped up the workshops leading up to the tourney.

"It just makes me want to train much harder again," she says, keen to catch the eye of the national selectors.

Both teenagers are indebted to coach Alani Samia for honing their skills and passion for the game.

"He's taught me everything and up to where I've got to now," says Baker, a year 13 pupil.
Pemberton, a year 11 pupil, says her team's final game simulations yesterday will help them gel and compete.

Occupying the middle position, the 15-year-old becomes the main blocker and receives quick hits from the setter.

Pemberton found traction with the code as a year 4 pupil at Greenmeadows School in Napier.

"I just loved the teamwork and how people come together to achieve the same goals."

She has made incremental gains since her first foray in trying to become a specialist blocker through training with Samia.

A Bay rep since year 9, Pemberton doesn't play any other sport and finds it provides an ideal distraction from swotting.

"I want to go to university so I'll probably play it there as well," she says, hoping to pursue a degree in psychology.

Her father, David Pemberton, a businessman, played volleyball at a social level and has encouraged her to stay with it.

She is keen to attend national age-group trials.

Samia, who also coaches the NZ U20 men, will take the team, which includes NBHS pupil Jacarn Peeti-Webber, to Florida this weekend.

A national U19 men's team is competing in Canberra this week. Havelock North High School pupil Brandon Johnston and Sam Kaloni, of Gisborne High School, are in the mix, according to Volley Hawke's Bay operations manager Tony Barnett.

Volleyball HB manages representative teams and the secondary schools' qualification process for the Secondary School Nationals embracing the Hawkes Bay/Poverty Bay region.