National Juniors Canberra 2006

So the last Australian Junior Championships was my farewell at a Junior level in all forms of the game. I hvae loved playing Juniors over the years and possibly my favourite volleyball tournament that I have played in was back in U/16s in Newcastle where both the South Australian boys and girls won!!! Since then howevever I've had no such luck in winning another Gold medal. Losing a 17s grand final and not playing either year of 19s, and come 21's we probably did not have the firepower to win either tournament due to injuries and people pulling out to due to financial costs and other things.
Obviously finishing 5th is a bit of a downer on the week, especially when if we had won our last pool game we would of finished in 2nd place and played of for gold! So yeh thats a pretty bad turn around. However I had a great time playing 2006 juniors. I was lucky enough to have a team that featured a lot of my best mates from back home, so it was great to catch up with them for that week. We had some good moments during the week. Winning a big 5 setter against New Zealand after saving match points, and dominating the QLD team in what was our most polished performance of the week. Again it was just that lack of firepower from the hitters and the inability to side out due to making direct hitting errors that stopped us from playing in those medal games at the end of the tournament.
I was lucky enough to be selected in the All Star 6 team which is always a good achievement. However this year I felt like the all star 6 probably didnt have the best players. I thought it was ridiculous that some players who clearly dominated in there position were not in the all star team. In the end we had 5 outsides and a Libero in the team. I'm not sure if there was much controversy in the other All Star selections, but i know in 21's most players were annoyed with the team selected and the selection process! One of the guys who made the team was even extremely suprised that he made it. I wish there was a far better system implemented than what they have at the moment.
So now I'm over that point I'd like to say I've had a great time over my junior career, i've had fun playing the game I love and I've made a lot of friends doing it. I will definitelly be following the performance of all the teams in future years.