Nayland College volleyballers are Australian Champions

Nayland College's girl's volleyball team exceeded expectations when they returned from the Australian School Championships with gold around their necks.

While coach Brendan Crichton knew they had the makings of a strong side, he was still surprised with how the team performed.

"Nine of our 12 players could have played down a grade, they were young enough.

"You're playing against a couple of massive Australian schools. Like Brighton and Heathfield, they do volleyball as a subject and send 20 teams to nationals each year."

Adding to the underdog status is Australia's volleyball season is at the tail end, while Nayland have just started theirs and struggled to even get warm-up matches with a lot of squads yet to be formed.

With the tournament played on the Gold Coast, almost 5,500 students from 150 schools competed over six days of competition.

Brendan has been to about half a dozen Australian School Championships in the past and says it's always a hard task to come up against teams who are coming into the tournament at the peak of their performance.

"We had gone in more under-prepared than the Australian sides. . . but we've been training really well.

"In Australia, there's two teams per state so you're getting the best of the best."

Brendan says with a squad of 18, they've had the numbers to practise game scenarios together, but it still looked like an uphill battle.

He says that gave him an expectation of how they would perform, wanting to come home with a medal, but once they got there, the players stepped up to another level.

"We performed a lot better than what I thought.

"There's a real strong group of talented and athletic girls. We have a couple of freakish athletes, Briana Barber, Nevaeha Neho and Abby Rangi."

He says that the success of the team is the culmination of over two decades of tireless work in the volleyball space by locals.

"What we've done in the volleyball space in the last 20 years for a little old provincial school is unbelievable. Long may it continue.

"All schools (in Nelson) do well. That's why we've had success from time to time."

Waimea College's senior boy's team took fifth place in the Open Honours Men's division, having drawn the 'pool of death'.