AT 5’8” Carly McKinlay is a tall woman by any normal standards but in the Amazonian world of volleyball’s hitters and blockers she has long operated at a significant height disadvantage.
Not that it looked that way when she was first persuaded to take up the sport as a teenager when a PE teacher at Rutherglen’s Stonelaw High School recognised her potential.
“I didn’t like it when I started,” the 28-yeare-old confesses, with a laugh.
“I liked badminton, but one of the PE teachers Mr Byrne was really into volleyball. He took my PE lesson once day and said: ‘You’re tall you should come and play volleyball.’ I wasn’t that interested but all my friends played and I got involved and really enjoyed it.”
So much so that she joined the Glasgow Mets club where she made excellent progress before taking a year out to go travelling after university and, on returning, joining Scotland’s best known club.
Su Ragazzi - which apparently acquired its unusual name because when it was formed in the eighties the players liked the Italian phrase for ‘come on boys’ - has become a powerful force in both the men’s and women’s games and McKinlay consequently earned a place in Scotland’s international squad, but being “really small for a volleyball player, especially in my position,” worked ever more against her and she felt that was preventing her from establishing a place in the national team's starting line-up.
In her mid-20s she knew she was not going to get any taller, so had to find ways of getting better and in particular, to paraphrase the Woody Harrelson film of the nineties, show that Scottish girls can jump. However it is not that easy to get the necessary technical support, even for those playing at international level.
Since volleyball is not a Commonwealth Games sport and no British team was sent to the Olympics in Rio, it is another example of the flawed way funding happens in this country with its myriad health problems, that a sport with the potential to get large numbers of youngsters active does not have access to the sort of support that is available to those in which medals can be won.
McKinlay knew she would have to find her own solution and was directed towards Mark Laurie, whose business Specific Strength and Fitness Ltd, which he set up in Glasgow’s Townhead last year, claims to have the capacity to replicate the sort of programmes that is available to leading athletes supported by the national Institute of Sport.
“The girls I’m competing against in the national team are at least 5’11” and the girls you’re competing with at national level would all be six feet and over,” McKinlay pointed out.
“To try to combat that I wanted to look at increasing my overall strength and conditioning and particularly my jump height. My sister-in-law used to work with Mark in one of his previous jobs and told me about what he’s trying to do. I sent him an email and could tell from the level of detail in his response that he knew what he was doing. The idea that what he would do was specific to individual athletes and the sport they do really appealed to me.”
The statistical improvement is compelling and anecdotal evidence even more so. She has improved her spike jump height (that’s a running jump to the rest of us), by 11 centimetres (more than four inches) and her block height (standing jump) by 7.7 centimetres (more than three inches).
“I’ve seen huge improvements,” she said.
“We get tested at the start of each new block and my jump height’s come up significantly. We do an overall athletic ability assessment, which looks at all your movement, your mobility, your stability, your strength and in all those areas I’ve improved quite significantly. I feel there’s been huge improvements and it’s been commented on by my coaches both at club level and at national team level.
“We had a tournament in Luxembourg with Scotland at the end of June and I was selected ahead of some of the other girls in my position who are taller than me. There were two rounds of selection and I got selected in the first round.
“I would say I’m still working my way into that starting six. I’m still not a guaranteed starting player, but I think I’m working my way up and I feel all the girls have noticed.”
McKinlay was also voted player of the season at Su Ragazzi for the first time in her career as they won the national title for the first time since she joined them five years ago and the League Cup.
Inevitably some of her team-mates are asking her to share her secret and the national team management have consequently made enquiries about getting Laurie on board to work with the whole squad.
“We’ve got players in the Scotland team who were part of the 2012 Olympic programme and some have played professionally so they’ve been quite serious about strength and conditioning, but other girls who are newer to the programme and maybe haven’t been involved in strength and conditioning have been asking me about it,” McKinlay observed.
“A few years ago a few girls were getting support through the institute but I’m not aware of any now. We want the whole team to improve so I’m sharing as much as I can and we want everyone to be getting stronger. Obviously there are girls you’re competing against but it’s a team sport.”
The defence of Su Ragazzi's Scottish Volleyball Premier League title gets underway today (Saturday), while the national squad gathers for the first time this season tomorrow.
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