Taunton School student Georgia McGovern, who is 15 years old, has had a busy two weeks playing for the England U17 and U19 volleyball team in Denmark.
Georgia co-captained the England U17 team in the North European Volleyball Zonal Association (NEVZA) championship in Denmark. The England team qualified for the quarter-finals but were beaten by eventual gold medal winners Denmark. This was Georgia’s last England U17 match having been their starting setter (playmaker) for the last three years.
Georgia then joined the U19 squad for their NEVZA tournament where England progressed to the semi-finals for the first time ever. Denmark, the eventual winners, proved too strong for the young English team and England were very narrowly beaten to the bronze by Norway.
Paul Welsh, the England coach commended Georgia’s strong performance throughout the championship. He said, “Georgia had a fantastic NEVZA U19 competition. She has trained extremely hard and this hard work was there for everyone to see. She ran our offence exactly to the game plan we had in place, which helped the team to finish in a record fourth place finish. A key strength for Georgia this year was her serve pressure; she topped the statistics for most aces and positive serves in the whole competition. When you add this to the huge success she had offensively, in my opinion, she was in the top two setters within this year’s competition.”
Georgia has now appeared 43 times for England playing against a total of 15 different countries.
