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SEB Football hard at work
Southeast Bulloch head football coach Barrett Davis delivers a speech to his team during a summer conditioning workout Monday morning in Brooklet. Davis enters his second season at the helm of the Yellow Jackets.
- photo by JOSH AUBREY
Southeast Bulloch head coach Barrett Davis decided to forgo spring football in order to be able to participate in two preseason scrimmages next month, so it's been a busy couple of months of weight training and conditioning for the Yellow Jacket players — on top of covering the Xs and Os — as they try to build on a successful first year under Davis.
Georgia Southern hosts more than 300 at Volleyball Skills Camp
Georgia Southern outside hitter Sam Bowron performs a drill on digging out tough shots while high school campers look on during the Eagles' camp.
- photo by JOSH AUBREY/staff
JOSH AUBREY/staff
jaubrey@statesboroherald.com
Updated: Jul 25, 2025, 2:17 PM
Published:
The success of Georgia Southern volleyball has been spilling into the summer.
The Eagles are coming off a season in which they went 22-7, including going a perfect 14-0 at home and, for the second straight season, head coach Chad Willis took the Eagles to the postseason.
Recently, Willis saw a record number of more than 300 high school players and teams come to the Georgia Southern campus to participate in their sixth annual summer team camp.
“It’s great to see the level of talent and teams that have been coming here for three or four years in a row,” Willis said. “To see their growth as teams and the trust they put in us to come back every year says a lot. It’s a great chance to give back to the community and to continue to foster relationships with coaches and players from throughout the state and beyond.”
This was actually the third camp the Eagles have hosted this summer, as they had their all-skills camp in June and then their college ID camp a couple of weeks ago. The most recent camp was to teach skill training and to allow the teams to go up against each other in friendly competition. Willis said the camps are not only a way to pass on knowledge to area teams but they also use them for recruiting purposes.
Georgia Southern junior middle blocker Kayla Knowles gives instruction during the Eagles' high school summer volleyball camp held on campus.
- photo by JOSH AUBREY/staff
“Obviously our college ID camp is the main camp for identifying talent, but we also see a lot this week with our team camp,” Willis said. “We have over 300 kids from Georgia and South Carolina here for three days so you get to expose them to our campus but we also see some younger age talent we get a chance to evaluate as well.”
Many of the teams in town came from at least a few hours away. The team with the shortest bus ride to Hanner was Statesboro High. Head coach Bob Massee and Willis have a great relationship and he feels it’s important for his team to get in as much work as they can in the off season.
“This is actually the first time in 15 years I have been able to bring our team to a camp in the summer,” Massee said. “We are seeing a lot of drills and are able to play a lot of games against other teams we don’t normally see too much. Coach Willis runs a smooth camp with plenty of opportunities for learning as well as playing which is great for our team.”
Helping to work the camps are members of the Eagle volleyball team. Willis feels this is a great opportunity for the players to not only understand where the coaches are coming from, but he thinks by teaching it also helps the players work on their fundamentals.
“Sometimes I feel we get as much as the players that are here watching and learning from us,” said Eagle outside hitter Sam Bowron. “It is cool to see how some of the drills we are teaching them can really improve a team just by doing it for a few hours. I never got a chance to go to a camp like this when I was in high school but I think something like this would have been great and we take a lot of pride in working with these players here.”
The Eagles open the season Aug. 23 as they take on South Carolina in an exhibition game at 7:00 at Enmarket Arena in Savannah.