The senior women’s volleyball team are returning to international competition this week for the first time since the Covid pandemic.

A squad of ten fly out to Antigua on Thursday and the trip heralds a new era for the programme with young players experiencing a senior tournament for the first time and head coach Shaela Rae, a former Bermuda player, taking charge of the team.

Rae is excited to be part of the coaching team alongside assistant Kayla Grant and is anticipating some top performances despite Bermuda being ranked bottom of the six team in the ECVA Women’s Indoor Volleyball Championship.

“I’m very excited and this is my first time in the head coach position, so it’s a debut for me which is always exciting and thrilling,” Rae said.

“We have a really strong team and not withstanding the fact that we have been seeded sixth, so in last place in the tournament, I think we have a strong chance of coming away with a medal, which is really exciting.

“It’s the women’s team’s first step back into international competition for quite a few years and the other nations will be wise not to underestimate us as we have taken that time to develop, to travel, to compete in the United States and the team has grown, so girls who were juniors five years ago have come through the programme and are strong players with a depth of experience.

“We are still a very young team, led by our one veteran Sharri Wheldon, but everyone else is aged 20 or under, which is really exciting.”

With a lot of young players comes the logistical nightmare of trying to foster team spirit as some of the Bermuda squad are at colleges and universities overseas but the coaching team have come up with initiatives to bring the girls together.

“Half of our team is currently away at university, which always makes for a challenge, so we’ve had to approach training innovatively,” Rae said.

“In addition to our training sessions with the group on island, we have implemented weekly training homework for the girls who are away. They are responsible for checking in to confirm they have completed their homework and their training. We have also introduced a weekly team zoom call to allow everyone to talk abut how their week went and to ensure that camaraderie is built and allow the girls who are aware to feel like they are actively participating.

“It’s a unique challenge having half the team away so we tried to bring the team together as much as we could. A lot of these girls have been playing together for years and years so there is a depth of relationships there, which is always helpful.”

Bermuda’s first match comes against Sint Maarten on Friday at 9pm and they players are well drilled with the coaches concentrating on different parts of the game.

“We get involved in everything but dividing and conquering where it makes sense,” Rae said.

“I’ve traditionally been an attacker, whereas Kaila has been a setter and a defensive specialist, so we’ve been able to get insight from very different perspectives.

“Where I’m weaker, which would be coaching setting, she can swoop in with her expertise. Similarly, I give clinics on how to attack and how to block, which may not be her forte.

“We have complementary skill sets, which is great, and because we both have demanding lives, I’m a corporate lawyer with a busy career and she is a young mother with a busy career as an occupational therapist, when one can’t make it to something the other one picks it up

“We also have the support of Gary LeBlanc, who is the overall head coach of the programme, and he has helped us to get the girls ready for this tournament.”