OUR EXPERIENCE
A quick YouTube search revealed the Sitting Volleyball Finals at the 2012 London Paralympic Games. Almost immediately, I thought the game looked intense – it was crazy fast-paced (way more so than standing volleyball) and required lots of agility and movement. I confess when I first heard “sitting volleyball”, I thought it would be mostly stationary. I could not have been more wrong!
We got a group together and tried to play sitting volleyball at the OMAC. Due to missing equipment, we were unable to use the volleyball net and had to use the badminton net instead. It was quite apparent that we would need to relax the rules; otherwise, we would never have been able to get the ball over the net. We lowered the net below the required 1 meter, used half the court size of a normal sitting volleyball court, and had eight (instead of six) people on each side. Even then, it was a huge struggle to hit the ball over the net and get a rally going. This was partially due to the floor of the OMAC; it was not conducive to sliding. Eventually, we got the hang of it, and people started being more receptive to the idea of trying to be mobile; we got some good dives in and had some rallies.
The people around us unfortunately had to chase our volleyball many times. Quick chats with them afterwards revealed that not many of them knew what was going on. When we revealed the purpose of our being there, they thought it made sense.
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