Strood Volleyball Club was established in Medway, Kent some 35 years ago.  We offer members weekly coached training sessions and the opportunity to play in the leagues run by the Kent County Volleyball Association (KCVA).  We have 3 teams - Men, Women and Foundation.  The Foundation League was introduced by Kent Volleyball Association some 10 years ago, with the aim of promoting enjoyable, recreational volleyball in an informal match situation for beginners and those on the fringes of regular first team play.

Throughout the pandemic we kept in touch with our members by email and in our club’s Facebook group, providing updates on Volleyball England’s plans for return to play as the nation embarked on a course out of lockdown.

To help maintain motivation and fitness we shared online activities during the lockdown which we hoped would keep members engaged and support their wellbeing.  Some of our members participated in a light-hearted ‘virtual’ Taskmaster series organised by KCVA to try to keep the county volleyball community active and competing against each other (and providing a few chuckles at each other’s expense!)

Many of our members found the restrictions during lockdown affected their physical and mental wellbeing and were looking forward to coming back to training, improving their fitness and being able to socialise in a volleyball environment.

We engaged a group of our senior members in preparing action plans and Covid risk assessments for when we would be able to return to play.

Our challenges fell into a number of categories:

a.       Members returning

While many of our members were looking forward to returning to play, there were some who remained thoughtful about returning to a social sporting environment indoors.  Some of our coaches had decided either to stay away from volleyball for a while longer or to reduce the time they could commit to the club.

b.       Access to time in the sports hall

One of our biggest challenges was to get indoor court time.  Prior to Covid, the sports centre we have used since the club was established offered us midweek training sessions up to 10:30pm.  But as we embarked on the 4 steps of the government’s path out of lockdown, the sports centre’s opening hours were heavily reduced; initially the centre only remained open until 8pm, later extended to 9pm.

It gave us a major headache as we were not able to secure time slots which worked for our adult members, in particular.  Many do not work locally so could not attend earlier midweek sessions (which we could not secure, anyway).  At the same time, we were seeing a significant uplift in the numbers wanting to attend our junior / youth group sessions.

With less time available to us, yet with our junior section expanding, we elected to allocate our indoor time to the junior group.  Our adults training moved to outdoors on a Sunday afternoon over a fairly old outdoor net system.  For the most part, the weather was kind to us, but there were not many locations which offered good protection from the wind.  So, a bit of a learning curve for those who were not familiar with outdoor volleyball!!  And Sunday afternoons were not always convenient for our adult group every week.

c.       Equipment

We also needed more equipment to help manage the larger numbers of juniors.  We wanted to be able to allocate equipment to specific training bubbles, to reduce instances of cross-contamination.  We want to keep balls in ball carts and bags that will identify the bubble that are using them.

Of course, balls and equipment need to be sanitised regularly during training sessions, so we needed to get a supply of materials to make sure we follow Covid guidelines and our risk assessments.

d.       Track and Trace

All clubs needed to have an effective system in place for returning to play.  We also needed to share the information with our sports centre so they knew who was present at each of our sessions.

The club chose to use an App called Spond to manage the numbers attending sessions, especially indoors.  Spond also provided us with an output which we could use to provide the information needed by the Sports Centre for T&T purposes.

With the numbers attending sessions, it was not realistic to expect the coaching team to maintain an overview of compliance with our COVID mitigation measures.  So we needed to have a separate small group of volunteers who could supervise sessions to make sure we didn’t trip ourselves up.

We became aware of the Return to Play fund, via information shared by the Volleyball England Foundation.  With guidance from the Foundation we were able to put an application together to finance some of the extra costs of returning to play, created by the need to overcome the challenges identified above:

·       New ball carts

·       New junior training balls and bags

·       Additional balls for adults group to facilitate training bubbles.

·       Outdoor net systems and outdoor balls to make greater use of outdoor training.  Ultimately, this enables us to offer outdoor sessions for junior members alongside adult groups, while keeping the 2 groups separate.

·       Purchase of sanitisation materials for cleaning of balls / equipment

·       Electronic whistles for use by coaches and referees

·       Cage / Locker for storage of additional equipment.

·       Acquisition and installation of a new net system

The support from Sport England has been superb.

After submitting our initial application for support (and just before it was approved) we learned that our Sports Centre would not be returning to pre-COVID opening hours before April 2022 (and, quite probably, never).

After much discussion within our club, we concluded that we had no alternative but to seek another venue for our training sessions and home matches.  This would involve a significant uplift in our project cost as there are very few venues which have an equipment set-up for competitive volleyball; only a tiny percentage even have a volleyball court marked out in the sports hall.

I approached Sport England to enquire if they would consider a request to re-shape the award already approved.  That would include an increase in the amount requested, in order to purchase and install a brand new net system.  I had a couple of telephone conversations with one of the Sport England team and they were really helpful.  They were receptive to our request, although we needed to find a venue and get a firm costing for the installation before we could submit a revised bid.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth and many hours researching potential new venues, then approaching them to enquire if they could offer us the time slots we needed, I narrowed our search down to 2 venues who are interested in taking things further with us.

I discussed next steps with Sport England, who were able to explain how they needed me to present our revised bid.  I submitted our bid and it was approved just over 24 hours later.  That’s fantastic service and a great outcome for us. 

We are very much looking forward to acquiring the new equipment to make it easier to provide COVID-secure sessions at our club.

We still have a little way to go to get over the line with a potential new venue and it will be a logistical challenge to get the installation completed.  Neither of the potential venues on our shortlist has any volleyball set up at all and as they are school venues we will need to schedule it for when the hall is not being used (I am advised that it takes the best part of a day just to mark out and paint the court lines).

We will continue to explore other venues, as we may be able to find one which can offer us an improved overall package.  But the path should be smoothed by the knowledge that we can finance the installation from the award made by Sport England.

I am hopeful we can complete a move before Christmas, so we can start the New Year in a new venue, with a shiny new net system to play over.  Maybe our players will be looking forward to shifting the results of festive over-consumption…….

Thank you Ian Ruddock for telling us about the challenges faced by Strood VC over the last 18 months.