My JCC Experience – Tom Lycett

Each year we ask a number of our young athletes to report back on their experience, today we focus on Tom Lycett who was selected to represent the SW at this summer’s Junior Commonwealth Cup.

 

SWVA Team: Rob Morgan, Mattie Tildesley, Harry Brett, Tom Lycett

I had played for South-West at the Inter-Regionals indoor and Inter-regionals beach, but didn’t have loads of experience at beach volleyball. But I went to the selection camp in Croyde anyway. Ben Fairweather and Dan Mrowiec were the coaches, we did drills and serving and played different games in different combinations to see what worked.

I was selected to play with Harry Brett as team 2, Rob Morgan and Mattie Tildesley were team 1. I knew Harry from beach training in Croyde and Rob and Mattie from the Volleyball England U19 pathway. We travelled to Cardiff for early on Saturday 13th August.

Teams playing were Scotland 1 and 2, Wales, Northern Ireland 1 and 2 and Ireland, also England SouthWest and England SouthEast. There are 6 volleyball courts in Victoria Park – the junior girls played one side and the boys on the other. We all helped with scoring and had to ref sometimes.

The weather was really, really hot – 34° C at one point. Shade was from hats, umbrellas and gazebo’s. But at mid-day it was brutal – I wore sand socks for the first time, as the sand was painful to walk on. They used sprinklers and a hose to cool the sand down between matches and there was a cold outside shower to stand under between games. We drank a lot of water and Lucozade.

On the first day we played Wales, Southeast, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Our coach, Dan was really great on Saturday giving tips and tactics. This was the first time Harry and I have played together and for the first match we were working things out.

Harry has more beach experience than me, he plays left side and I’m more on the right side. Both the SW boys teams finished the day unbeaten, we drove 40 mins to Newport where we stayed in a budget hotel. We were just hanging out and discussing the matches.

On the Sunday we got up early and drove back in to Cardiff. Sunday was hot again. We made it to the quarters, then the semis. The final was a tight match against Scotland 1- who we had beaten on the Saturday but we were all improving. We lost a competitive and close 3rd set to lose our final game by 2 points.

Dan and Rob won their match – so they played a golden set with Scotland 1 for the trophy. It was close – but Scotland just edged ahead and won. It was a rush because Scotland had taxi’s waiting to take them to the airport and home.

So SW boys finished second, we were pleased with the results as in the inter-regionals we had finished third, so that is a step up. But obviously next year we’re looking to come first and get the gold!

Thanks to Dan for being there on the Saturday and Ben Fairweather and Dan for running the trial and all their coaching. Thanks to Dave Reece for organising things and arranging sponsorship. We had a lot of parents to support us, though they didn’t make as much noise as the home Welsh guys!

I would recommend anyone in the SW teams to try for the beach squads as its great experience and I learnt a lot. Beach is good for skills and fitness and you might find out you like it like I did. Everyone was chilled and it was great to meet players from all over the UK and Ireland.

Tom Lycett

The Junior Commonwealth Cup (JCC) is a Home Nations Junior competition held in Cardiff.