Volleyball is a team sport, played with 7 players on each side with rotation, in which a point is scored either by grounding the ball in the opponent’s court, or by the opponent committing a fault like touching the ball twice, grounding the ball outside the court boundaries, touching the net, or catching and throwing the ball. In BOSM, the league matches will be scored according to best of three sets, with the last set being played for 15 points. The finals and semi finals will be best of five sets.

Rohit Mandar, the captain of the volleyball (boys) team for this year, is very happy with his team’s preparation and is confident of its success. Although the team is newly constructed this year, he feels they have the talent to get them through to their second consecutive gold. The squad performed well in their outstation tournaments as well by reaching the quarter finals.

The team practices twice a day, on a daily basis, to perfect their game. They initially had issues with the authorities regarding the quality of their courts and the inventory not being supplied, but with multiple complaints and coercion, they have surmounted all their problems to play with full preparedness in the upcoming BOSM.

He feels his biggest competitor is the team from IIT Delhi. The captain started volleyball for the first time in class 11, and BOSM was the first professional tournament he had played for. He says that the star player on the team is his senior, Arjun Choudhary, who he also idolises as a player.

His experience as a captain has been very enriching. Handling academics and sports may be a little daunting, but he is enjoying the journey. He says, “Hard work and effort makes a tough game also easy to win. We must cheer on our college’s team, but must not be rude to the others.”