Volleyball is a sport that has traditionally relied on schools to provide for its future well-being. Many of Scotland’s best club sides have grown out of schools. Motherwell’s Dalziel High and Whitburn Academy were among the first national league teams to emerge from schools and, more recently, former men’s champions City of Glasgow Ragazzi and current women’s champions Troon did too.

As the Scottish volleyball season draws to a close, Queensferry High, Edinburgh, has shown its mettle. The school’s development programme has matured so well that a national league team, City of Edinburgh@Queensferry, which was constituted three years ago, has just secured promotion to the women’s first division under head coach John Scobie.

This has proved to be the icing on the cake for Jim Ferguson, the school’s volleyball director. Sixteen years ago, when he left Whitburn Academy to join the physical education staff of Queensferry High, it had no formal volleyball team. Now the school has a successful assembly line producing players for the top levels of the game.

There are currently around 100 regular players at the school. Most of them are girls, though the boys’ set-up is thriving with around 20 players. It is a new group but one that is expected to grow steadily.

“Our main problem with the boys is that we inevitably lose some to football,” says Mr Ferguson. “But we are now taking boys and girls from feeder primary schools for after-school sessions during the summer term with a view to getting them when they start as first-years.

“Last year we had 120 children. Even if we lose children to other sports when they start secondary school, we still have a good-sized group to fall back upon.”

To encourage children to take on more responsibility for sport than simply turning up and playing, they are coached in officiating and in basic volleyball teaching awards. This ensures that there is an administrative framework in place to support the playing side.

The volleyball set-up has outgrown the school. From lunchtime and after-school sessions, there are now Saturday and Sunday sessions with the Queensferry club covering every base from beginnersrecreational level through junior national league, which began three years ago, to national league.

Nine players who are in the girls’ national junior squad at under-16 or under-19 level, and some of those will progress to full Scotland level, have been given a solid grounding in the game at Queensferry High.

The Queensferry club has forged a link with City of Edinburgh men’s team, who have just won promotion to the second division of the men’s national league.

Mr Ferguson admits that it is through establishing solid community links that the club has been able to go on to a high level after taking players from school. The club works closely with City of Edinburgh development officer Mel Coutts and also uses Kirkliston Sports Centre.

Mr Ferguson is proud that the school can now boast its part in nurturing one of Scotland’s top eight teams. “It is a tall order going from a school team to a division one national league team. I don’t think there is anyone else in Scotland who has done it by going through from the third division to second to first in successive seasons without using established senior players,” he says.

“It has been a long process and we have had to work hard at it. It started with the first basic interest from myself and then it was a case of getting other members of staff involved and then, when you have so many children involved, you are also relying on parent help.”

Raising a senior team has not been without difficulty. “I reckon we lost three or four years in our development eight years ago when we could not sustain it,” Mr Ferguson continues.

“We were going to go into partnership with another Edinburgh team but their set-up was not as strong as we had hoped and it fell through. We ended up losing players who went on to join other national league teams, like Falkirk, Pentland and the Jets.”

In addition to acting as Queensferry High’s volleyball director, Mr Ferguson is seconded to the Scottish Volleyball Association one day a week to act as national festivals organiser. He reports that before the Easter holidays, a P6-P7 festival in South Lanarkshire was organised and run by pupils at Hunter High in East Kilbride as part of their Standard grade and Higher studies. The pupils were given the day off school to administer and referee the day under the guidance of PE teacher Lesley Stewart.

Such events show that the sport is taking care of its grassroots. If it can ensure that school leavers continue to play for clubs, then it will have a healthy future. The junior national league is a way of strengthening school-club links and an attempt to keep young players coming through. The main problems for the sport have been clubs not having the administrative framework or the talent coming through to sustain it.

The success of the Queensferry model suggests that their next milestone will be the Scottish title.