Mr Kilham’s Coaching New Zealand
Andrew began coaching volleyball at Matamata College in 1992. He says it’s been exciting to watch the interest in the game develop to the point where we find it hard to get all our junior teams to Hamilton to play their matches at the end of each year.
He coached his first Waikato age group team in 2000 and he’s been involved in coaching both boys’ and girls’ age group provincial teams ever since. He’s also had two stints coaching at the Hamilton Volleyball Club, one with the women’s A team and more recently with a women’s developmental B team.
In 2014 he was appointed North Island Youth Women’s coach. He coached North Island teams for three years which included two trips to the Australian Junior Volleyball Championships. He enjoyed the process of attending training camps, selecting teams, planning campaigns and building teams who had never previously played together. Numerous players from these teams have since represented full New Zealand teams and Andrew says it’s exciting to see them moving forward and still loving the game. These North Island teams produced impressive results, bringing home a gold and a silver medal from their Australian trips.
The most exciting part of his coaching is working with Matamata College teams. Andrew enjoys watching our teams improve and develop. He’s proud of the results the school has produced but just as proud of how hard the teams work and how committed they are to each other. He says he can’t pick out an individual highlight as every team leaves their own special memories. One significant moment he particularly enjoys is when looks through the net at the start of a match and the opposing team is being coached by a former Matamata College player!
Andrew has recently been appointed as the New Zealand Youth Women’s volleyball coach. The players he will look after are those born in 2004 and 2005 so they will be relatively inexperienced. The programme for the 2019-2020 time period is still being worked out but he says the prospect of attending international events is very exciting and he can’t wait to get started.
Andrew wishes to thank all the principals, teachers, sports coordinators and committee members from the Sports Club who have encouraged and supported volleyball at Matamata College. He says he’s been around too long to name them all but he stresses that we would not have enjoyed our level of success without their huge input.