ROYAL CITY — The Royal Knights volleyball team is hosting an upcoming summer training camp July 6-10. This camp provides an opportunity for the Knights new head coach Melanie Griffin to get to work with her new team. 

“I’m pretty excited about it,” said Griffin. “I think we have a lot of promise, we have a lot of girls that are playing outside the season. We’re looking pretty good; the future looks bright for us.” 

Griffin is taking over the program after Lisa Lawrence stepped away from the position during the offseason.

Griffin said she played volleyball for Royal during her own high school years and has been coaching the sport in various forms over the last 20 years.  

She coached 13 seasons in Royal with six taking place at the middle school level and seven as an assistant high school coach. She also has had multiple years of experience coaching club and youth development teams. 

As she steps in as the head coach, Griffin said she wants to work towards building a strong volleyball culture. 

“Royal has a football culture here. It’s what our boys do,” she said. “I’d like to build that same idea here. The girls plan on it, and the girls work on it outside the season, whether that’s playing club somewhere or just getting together and playing with girls here in Royal.” 

Griffin said she is anticipating building that culture with the help of the strong group of returning seniors in her first season as head coach. There is also a large group of freshman players looking to join the roster that she is seeing potential from that can carry the volleyball culture throughout their high school careers. 

The summertime is going to be spent for both the coach and her players to work toward building themselves up for when the season begins, she said. 

“I really plan to utilize those seniors,” said Griffin. “I’m not looking at this as a kind of first year building year, which of course it is; I 100% see that, but I see there’s some potential this year with these seniors too.” 

The high school’s volleyball camp will be open for grades 7-12 July 6-10 and run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then a skills camp for grades 3-6 will be held July 10 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

The camps will be held at the high school gym each day and those attending are advised to bring lunch. The cost for the 7-12 grade camp is $100 and the cost for the one day 3-6 grade camp is $20. 

To enroll in the volleyball camp, go to the Royal Knights Athletics Facebook page. 

“It’s going to be centered around a program that I have learned and really appreciated over the years, Gold Medal Squared,” said Griffin. “I hope it kind of fills in all the gaps and makes a cohesive, consistent (experience).” 

One of the main aspects of volleyball that Griffin said she wants to focus on during the camp is defense. With this she wants to develop the athletes’ hitting and footwork and strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the game outside of just hitting the big slams. 

“I’m a big defensive coach,” she said. “Defense does win volleyball games.” 

The final day of camp, July 10, will be an opportunity for high school players to teach the younger players about the sport. She hopes throughout the week that the players both in the Knights program and from lower grade levels can work and bond together. 

“Like I said, we’re looking at seniors and freshmen, so we'll need to get to know each other, do some team building, learn to really enjoy each other and come together as a team that way through camp,” said the coach.