The Powell Panther volleyball team welcomed athletes of all ages to the Powell High School gymnasium in early August, teaching the fundamentals of the sport to local youth to try and grow the sport in the community.

“It’s super nice just to get them exposed to some volleyball,” coach Anna Flitner said. “I wish that we had more opportunities like this, and I would really like to see it more often.”

Flitner said throughout the summer, she realized surrounding communities get their athletes involved with volleyball early on.

“I look at some of the surrounding communities, and volleyball is such a big thing,” Flitner said. “Even going to some of the grass tournaments over the summer, to team camp, (in) towns like Lovell, volleyball is just so big. So their young kids are involved early. I would like that to get started here as well, but it’s nice to at least have them for team camp or for the kids camp.”

The emphasis for the younger athletes at the camp is the same for what Flitner said the high school does, focusing on the fundamentals of the sport in order to improve before adding in fun games to use those skills.

“For both groups (young and old), it’s a lot of fundamentals. I was talking to the high schoolers, and fundamentals is something that we practice every single day,” Flitner said. “It’s the same for the young kids and the middle schoolers, and then just trying to incorporate ways to make it fun so that they’re wanting to come back and play in the gym and wanting to be a part of the program.”

With volleyball being such a technical game, Flitner said they work on keeping the athletes engaged and focused in order to learn those skills.

“Volleyball is a difficult sport at a young age to really develop a love for the game,” Flitner said. “Because you need a lot of the fundamentals to play a lot of the really big fun games, but we do want them to have a good time.”

One way Flitner and the Panthers help keep the younger athletes active and involved is through the high schoolers helping teach form and interacting with the kids, developing relationships that will keep drawing the younger generation into the gym and wanting to watch the Panthers.

“I think the biggest part is developing relationships with the high school players, so that that’s something they want to be a part of when they get older,” Flitner said. “I really try to get the high schoolers to develop relationships with the elementary and middle school kids, because that’s really what they’re here to be a part of. To learn the sport and to form those relationships with the girls in the program.”

She said the importance of the high school athletes coming in cannot be understated, as it allows the high schoolers to understand the skills in a different way while introducing the new Panthers into the gym before the new season started.

“It’s great for them to be teaching fundamentals because it reinforces the things that they’re going to be practicing in the season on a day-to-day basis,” Flitner said. “Also for our freshmen, it lets them know the expectations of ‘OK, this is something that we’re going to work on every single day and this is how I would teach it.’ It just really helps them solidify their skills by teaching it to someone else.”

The one thing Flitner hopes that the kids take from the camp is the exposure to the sport, as a lot of knowledge was thrown at the campers throughout the week.

“The biggest thing is exposure for me. I throw a lot at the kids, and they’re not going to be able to pick it up right away,” Flitner said. “But I hope that they’ve at least been exposed to a lot of different things in volleyball, that later, when they’re practicing, they can be like ‘oh, I heard that before. Yes, I learned that at camp and I’m ready to try it.’ So that way when they hear it in practice, or when they finally get to me, it’s not the first time that they’ve heard it before.”