When one thinks of Panorama high school, not only does great education come to mind but great athletics as well.

Over the many years one of the big common demonstrators has started with the youth. In the world of athletics, youth programs have often had a direct impact on the success at the future varsity level. From basketball to football, baseball to cross country, youth programs have delivered a big impact on the success of Panorama athletics.

One sport at Panorama that hasn’t had much in the world of youth programs has been volleyball but as of lately, the gears of change have been redirecting the course. Ever since her arrival at Panorama high school, coach Renae Follmuth has worked tirelessly with activities director Erin Ambrose to plan and implement such youth volleyball programs.

Raccoon Valley Radio got the chance to talk with Panorama activities director Erin Ambrose on the importance of youth programs in volleyball and the future impact they will have.

“When we sat down with my coach (Follmuth) last year and even the year before it’s been something she’s been talking about doing is implementing this youth program because you see a lot of the success that we’ve got in basketball and all of our other sports…they’re all starting when they’re quite a bit younger. It seems for us and our community volleyball has been one of those things where kids haven’t touched a volleyball until they’ve gotten into junior high and while we’ve got great numbers for participation in junior high, that’s not always a great thing. It’s not always a great thing because you’ve got a gym full of 30 or 40 kids trying to figure out the basic fundamentals and getting the ball over the net really in a matter of practicing for an hour after school for about a month. That’s hard then to develop a really sound high school program when the first time these girls are experiencing volleyball is in junior high. So our coach really helped to implement an offseason program for upper elementary as well as 6th, 7th, and 8th graders so that they can really brush up on their skills so that they’re also seeing the ball at an earlier time and understanding that,” explained Ambrose.

We’ll have more with Erin on the volleyball program at Panorama in future sports pages.