What ails Assam volleyball? Lack of coaches, ‘imports’, and a lot more

Guwahati: The 71^st Senior National Volleyball Championships for men and women concluded with great pomp and grandeur at the Sarusajai Sports Complex in Guwahati last month, with Rajasthan and Kerala walking away with the respective titles.

While Rajasthan got the better of the Services 3-0 in the men’s final, Kerala handed a 3-1 defeat to the Railways women’s team to lay their hands on the silverware.

While those are elementary stats from the championship, the main question here is: what did Assam gain as the hosts of the championships? From a competition point of view, both the men and women’s sides from Assam failed to make it to the quarterfinals of the tournament.

The women’s team began on a positive note, by notching up a 3-0 win over Manipur, before edging past Bihar 3-2 in their second match. Placed in Pool D, Assam lost their remaining two matches against Delhi and Telangana by identical 3-0 margins to make a pre-mature exit after finishing third with two wins and as many loses from four outings.

The men’s team underwent a rather forgettable outing, managing a solitary win from their five games in the first round. Assam began their campaign with a 3-1 defeat to minnows Mizoram, before recording a 3-0 win over Uttar Pradesh to raise a few hopes. But their abject surrender in the next three against Uttarakhand (3-1), Jharkhand (3-0) and Telangana (3-1) resulted in an embarrassment of sorts.

What plagues Assam volleyball?

EastMojo spoke to a couple of former and current players, who blamed it on the poor infrastructure, over dependence on ‘imports’ (term used for the ones who are employed in Assam but hail from other states), faulty workload management, lack of full-time coaches, besides a lot of other factors.

While highlighting the issues that plague volleyball in Assam, a former state player, who did not wish to be named, shared an incident from a trip to Jammu last October.

“First the tickets weren’t booked on time even though the tournament dates were announced long back, which is why most of the players had to travel without their seats being confirmed. While the manager of the side boarded the train from Guwahati, the rest of the contingent was to catch the train from Rangia junction. On boarding the train, we found most of the players’ seats weren’t confirmed and the manager hardly bothered,” the former player said.

“During the trip, the manager advised the team to share one bottle of water between two players. On reaching Delhi, there was no arrangement for food, and instead the team was taken to a roadside hotel. After reaching Jammu, we found that the organisers had made proper arrangements that included complimentary breakfast for the players. And accordingly, one of the players took an extra egg going by his dietary needs, which irked the manager, and did not go down well with the association as well,” the former player narrated.

Babli Bora, one of the players who represented the Assam women’s volleyball team in the championship, blamed a lack of dedicated training and combined practice sessions for the side’s dismal performance.

The 20-year-old from Furkating village, about 5kms from Golaghat district headquarters, said that the national-level volleyball players in Assam lack a full-time coach, ‘who’s given a longer rope’.

“There are various reasons, the primary one could be lack of practice. Whatever mistakes are committed during training sessions, professional players take note of that and try to rectify those errors. However, most people in the side get busy with their own stuff after the games, which in a way affects the overall performance of the team. You can’t pinpoint any player, it could also be me. But we need to lift ourselves as a unit, and get more combined training sessions, so that we can assess our strengths and weaknesses,” the player said.

“Volleyball is a team game, so to pick any weak-link in the side would be wrong. If we win it’s a team effort, and similarly if we lose, the entire team needs to take it with a pinch of salt. If you see the champion sides, we have a lot to learn from them, especially the amount of combined practice they undergo before taking part in any major competition. And there lies the difference in performance,” she further explained.

Babli, who primarily is a counter smasher, was given the role of a blocker for the championship, something which she feels isn’t very easy to cope with in mere 15 days of training.

A student of class 12, Babli appeared for the India trials held in Odisha last year but failed to impress the selectors, and is now looking forward to another shot for a slot in the national team. However, Babli knows that the road to national selection isn’t a cakewalk by any standard, and she feels the association must rope in a permanent coach and give him/her a ‘longer rope’ with the state team and help win national-level tournaments.

“Lack of permanent coaches is a major roadblock for the state’s players. In 2021, Sahil Trivedi from Odisha was roped in by the Assam Volleyball Association for a month. He was good but by the time we adapted to the changes he made in our techniques, he left. Another coach, Neeraj Nirpa Bahadur from Nepal, was brought in November 2022 for a month-long camp, and similarly, we could grasp as much as we could during his brief stint,” she explained.

The recently-concluded national volleyball championship was the first in senior category for Babli, who was a part of the Assam side in the 2021 Junior nationals, and Youth Nationals in 2022.

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