FOR the past year they have been bringing in coaches from Canada, playing in overseas tournaments and putting aside special nights for tactical training.

And now Bermuda's men's and women's national volleyball teams believe they are ready to make an impact at the Island Games in Guernsey starting this weekend.

The teams left last night bound for the Channel Islands and Bermuda Volleyball Association spokesman Gary Leblanc said: "We are ready for it and I believe we will do well. We have high expectations"

Bermuda's men's team will be in Group B at the games and will face Gotland, Saaremaa, Rhodes, Gibraltar and expect tough opposition from home team Guernsey. The teams in Group A include Aland, Faroe Islands, Cayman Islands, Jersey and Greenland.

Bermuda's women are in Group D and will face Saaremaa, Aland, Jersey and home team Guernsey. Group C include Fareo Islands, Gibraltar, Cayman Islands, Greenland and Hitra.

Leblanc said: "We have been training hard all year using mainly the gym at Saltus but we have also used the gyms at Mount St. Agnes, CedarBridge and the Bermuda High School.

"We are hoping that by competing in the Island Games we will raise the profile of volleyball in Bermuda. The last couple of years we have been really making a push to expand volleyball on the island. We know it is a relatively small sport because we are going up against cricket and football but our membership is going up - it is about 350 people this year which is excellent considering the population of the island."

Leblanc said that a year ago they began to choose the teams that would represent Bermuda at the games. "We started working for these games a year ago this week in fact," he said. "We had a try-out process for the national teams last summer and flew down some coaches from Canada - we needed to be as objective as possible and thought that was the best way to do it. The three coaches, who had a good 40 years of experience combined, looked at the players for a week during the try outs.

"We had 33 guys try out and we then had two cuts to bring the squad down to 15 players. We did the same for the women who

had about 23 players try out. Since then we have been training constantly. Over the past 10 months we have been training twice a week for these games as well as playing in our local leagues and competing abroad in tournaments.

"The women have taken part in three tournaments overseas - one in the US and two in Canada and the men have also taken part in two tournaments in Canada and one in the US."

Leblanc said that competing in the tournaments overseas has been great experience for the teams.

"A lot of us have had prior club volleyball experience but we really didn't know how we were going to do overseas. We choose tournaments which were high calbre and to be honest we thought we would be killed at them but we exceeded our expectations."

And playing all year round in Bermuda has also helped. "That is the great thing about Bermuda - you play all year round. In winter we have the indoor season and in the spring we move to Bernard's Park on the grass for our spring season and then we have our summer season which is the most popular when we play at either Horseshoe Beach or Elbow Beach. In the summer we play Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and then we have another league which plays on Sundays. We also have tournaments scattered all over the place as well."

And the majority of players also compete in those winter, spring and summer leagues. "We lose a few people here and there but then we gain more with people coming on the island. I would say that we get about 250 people playing consistently which is very good for a place like Bermuda. And after the Island Games hopefully we will get even more people coming out for the sport."

The volleyball tournament at the Island Games will be played at the Sir John Loveridge Hall and the Beau Sejour Leisure Centre in Guernsey and the organisers have imported two Taraflex floors for the six-person-per-team indoor games.

Competition starts on Sunday and Bermuda's women will first meet Saaremaa while the men will take on Gibraltar. The finals will take place on July 4.

The team manager of Bermuda is Bill Bucci who is the co-president of the Bemruda Volleyball Association while Bermuda's coach is Adam Fowler.

The Island Games will see more than 100 competitors and officials from Bermuda compete. Overall there will be 2,500 players and officials from 23 islands at the games competing in 15 sports.