4 Apr 2024
Volleyball England Sitting Cup and Shield: Scandinavian visit adds extra dimension to 2024 tournament
For one of the six teams who have entered the Volleyball England Sitting Cup and Shield 2024 – that will, Sitting Grand Prix Cup Final aside, bring the curtain down on the 2023-24 season – is the Norwegian national team.
Currently playing at level C of the European Championship, the sport in the team’s homeland is still in the developmental phase.
But it’s popularity is growing all the time and when the invitation was opened for international teams to enter the tournament for the first time, Norway jumped at the chance to gain valuable competitive experience overseas.
In England, they will take part in the practice scrimmage scheduled for Saturday and then joining Sitting Bucks, South Hants, Help For Heroes, Lincoln Imps and Panthers battle for the Sitting Cup and Shield on Sunday.
The team’s Assistant Coach Elisabeth Eyde – who is helping to establish a women’s team, which she will lead – is excited by the trip and feels it will offer valuable learning for the players and staff alike.
“Coming over to England will provide us with extra match training that will hopefully help us become a better team and to play as a team, rather than as single players from different clubs,” she said.
“We are hoping for even matches, so we can develop the team and each player, but we think that the level of the English teams may be slightly higher because our team has little to no experience together as a team.
“It’s motivating to meet new teams and see how our team and the English teams work together, so that we can gain more experience.
“If we can play some good matches and learn along the way then it will have been a worthwhile trip for us. We are taking small steps to get to know each other better as players and as a team.”
The Norway team will be able to call on no less than two Paralympic medalists former swimmer Erling Trondsen and Erik Halvorsen, who was part of them team in the early years of sitting volleyball as a Paralympic sport, winning a bronze in 1988 and silver in 1996.
Elisabeth added: “We have many exciting players, but now we are working hard together to build a strong team.
“Erling is one of our best players and has 20 paralympic medals in the pool. At the age of 64, he is still going strong and is committed to giving it one more year to make the team for the Division C European Championship in Norway next May.
“Erik has a silver medal from the Atlanta Paralympics and alongside them we have a lot of new players who are still to gain the experience.”
The pursuit of putting together a Norwegian national team has been going on since June last year, but this is the first time it has been selected to go to a tournament together.
Before that, members of the squad have been training and competing as club teams and open training weekends.
The immediate goal is to be competitive in the upcoming home European Championships while, long term the target is to ensure the sitting volleyball community in Norway continues to grow and get stronger in the years to come.
A particular area for focus is to recruit and more women players as there are currently not enough to form a team.
Training camps/tournaments are held around once a month and the ambition is to have a women’s competing at the aforementioned Euros next year.
“Sitting volleyball is slowly growing and players are joining already-established clubs and new clubs are popping up all around Norway,” said Elisabeth.
“The recruitment of new players takes time, but we believe that hard work will create bigger opportunities for sitting volleyball players in Norway.
“The Norwegian Volleyball Federation is now prioritising sitting volleyball and has a full-time employee working with para volleyball, plus two part-time coaches for the national teams.
“In 2022 The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF) released a strategy for parasports in Norway, which the Norwegian Volleyball Federation is a part of.
“The sitting volleyball is in the starting blocks ready for developing new players and strong teams for the future.”
The weekend’s competition structure will see the teams placed into two groups of three, which will be drawn on Sunday morning before play begins.
Each team in Groups A and B will play each other, with the top two sides in each group going forward to the Cup semi-finals.
The winners of those matches will go through to the contest the Cup final, while the losers will take on the two teams who finished third in their respective groups in the Sheild semi-finals.
Victors in those matches will contest the Shield final, while the two losers will play-off for fifth and sixth place.
The format means each team will have at least four matches, which will be played as the best of three sets.
Images courtesy of Trine Nessler Wichmann
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