PARTICIPATION IN OCCUPATION 2- Week 6

Week 6, playing volleyball would have been our most challenging game we have had yet!

As I’m now living in a different location (1hr and 20mins from the sports venue) I made an effort to travel to my game. I left home at around 5pm and got to the hall at around 615pm. luckily we didn’t have our game until 815pm. From arriving at the hall I was roped in to play for a team who was low in players which was fun as my friends were playing in the team and I was able to have a quick catch up on things while playing.

Then for the next 2 games I helped with the scoring and also gave me a chance to socialise with people I haven’t seen for a while.

Then it was time for our game. We only had 6 players which is the minimum you have on court, so if anyone got tired or had any injuries they would have to tough it out! The game didn’t start out very well. The opposition seemed to be getting points and we seemed to be getting none! We were doing bad hits and not communicating with each other well, leading to losing the first set. This made us take the game more seriously and in the second set we had better communication, better ball handling skills resulting in us winning the set by just 4! Last set was to determine who the winner of the game was, it was first to 30 and both sides were starting to look fatigued. But for the last 30 last points we both worked really hard and to our team’s relief we won the set by 1 point, winning us the game. I think we better this set as we had good control of the ball and controlled the passes we did to each other. Also good blocks were made which even I was able to successfully do which is an achievement in itself for someone as short as me! This would be the closest game we have had throughout the competition. After the weeks of playing volleyball I feel that it was the most satisfying win. This is because we had good competition and was playing a notoriously challenging team, so to win against that team felt like we achieved something as a team. We all left very satisfied with the win!

In the weeks of considering the aspects that play a large part in this paper I have come to consider practical considerations once again:

I noticed I stated that I felt like I had time to spend playing volleyball and overall participating playing for other teams and also doing score. Now coming so far along on the week I have found myself staying at home until later, still doing my 2 hours of the activity, but just that. I guess I didn’t take into consideration how the work load of the course gets greater over time and the closer the weeks got to exams and assessment; I would have less time for leisure activities.

Also, as I was looking around for good resources to relate back to volleyball I found a great reading on affordances in relation to volleyball and how it relates to anthropometric properties through the example of the block in volleyball!

This link was made through a study completed on volleyball players who were tested to see of the player could perceive the blockability of volleyball and if so what property can account for this. The results found that the player’s impulse determined if the ball was blockable or not. By noting this, kinetic factors can be perceived to have some influence on the behaviour as it can includes the person’s impulse and jumping ability. So as it concludes the manipulation of the kinetic factors and the players-environment contributes to the aspect of affordances (Pepping & Li, 1997).

I feel that this relates to the aspect ‘action properties’ and the indication of knowing what to do next afforded by the activity.



Reference:


  Pepping, G., & Li,F. (1997). Perceiving action boundaries in volleyball block. In  M.Schmuckler & J.Kennedy (Eds.). Studies in perception and action IV (pp. 137-139). USA: New Jersey, Lawrence Elbaum Associates Inc.