Merited Athlete An Nam Hui, instructor at Sosong District Extracurricular Sports School in Pyongyang, is well known across the country for training many promising women volleyball players.

For the past 20 years, she has trained more than 20 or so aces and over 90 other players for central-level sports clubs.

However, she once intended to give up playing volleyball.

As she was very tall in her childhood, she started to learn volleyball at 14 in the then Sinchon County Juvenile Extracurricular Sports School in South Hwanghae Province and then, at the age of 15, joined a sports school in the capital city.

But as she had learned volleyball for only a year at a regional sports school, she was often told that she was neither sufficiently agile nor correct in movements.

She gradually lost confidence in herself and thought about giving up volleyball. But she had a physical advantage.

As she was tall, she was capable enough to strike and block well and serve powerfully in particular.

After serious discussions the school authorities assigned a researcher to her.

The researcher gave her confidence, saying: You are tall and have long arms, so you are a right person for volleyball. You can be a good player if you diligently practise the movements suited to your physical features.

Since then she tried hard by the help of the researcher to learn the techniques suited to her physical conditions.

She used to stay longer in the training ground to master the techniques. Whenever she collapsed, so exhausted, her coach would encourage her saying: All those players who had won international matches, thus flying the national flag in the sky over foreign countries, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and trained hard against all odds. You must take your cue from them.

Her hard training paid off. Finally, she became an important member of her team and cut a conspicuous figure in several national competitions.

Later she was talent-spotted by the April 25 Sports Team. In 1995 she led her team to win the trophy in the 1st world military games.

Then she rose to the captain of her team and was successful in several international matches. As she grew older, she was no more healthy and fit enough to continue to play volleyball. She retired after over 20 years of her career as a player.

However, she could not abandon her love of volleyball. She felt guilty to cut her connection with volleyball when the government had awarded her the title of the Merited Athlete and a gold watch. This made her determine to become a volleyball instructor and applied for Sosong District Extracurricular Sports School.

At the school she devoted all her passion to training promising women volleyball players. In recognition of the feats she performed in training reserve volleyball players, the government invited her to the 7th National Conference of Sportspeople, during which she had the honour of having a photo taken with the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un .

Kim Ye Ryong