Sheffield VC - Long history of providing players for our National squads.

Tell us a bit about your club, history, achievement over the years.

Volleyball has been played in Sheffield since the 1960’s.  Originally it was just the universities and polytechnics (as they were known then) that played the game.  In the 1970’s it started to spread beyond the academic institutions and local clubs started to form in South Yorkshire.  Sheffield Polytechnic developed into a Sheffield based club in the early 1980s and in the late 1980s a local club Hillsborough Hornets was developing.  In the early 1990s both clubs merged to become Sheffield Volleyball Club and has been going ever since.  The club had several bases throughout those years but eventually moved to All Saints Sports Centre as a base in 2006.

Sheffield Volleyball Club is one of the biggest clubs in Yorkshire. It currently has 63 team members plus around 50 others playing recreational and junior/beginner volleyball.  The club runs 3 National League teams (Men’s Super League, NVL Men 2(North) and Women’s NVL 3 (North)). We also have male and female teams playing in the Yorkshire League premiership and championship. The club also has a recreational session every Sunday, throughout the year, which allows for a multitude of people to come and play volleyball and allows them to socialise with other people that live in or around Sheffield. At the start of this season we also started a fundamentals session for those wanting to learn volleyball. This took off quite quickly and before lockdown we had over 30 people attending with even more showing interest.

Recent National Honours

1998 Men’s National Cup Winners

2009 League winners NVL Div 1 (now called Men’s Super 8)

2009 League winners NVL Div 1 (now called Men’s Super 8)

2014 League winners NVL Men’s Super 8

2018 Women’s National Shield Winners

2018 Sitting Grand Prix and National Cup winners

2019 Sitting Grand Prix and National Cup winners

The club also provided two players (Joel Miller & Dami Bakare) to the 2012 GB Men’s Olympic Volleyball Squad.  Also, in both the men’s and women’s Olympic squads were several players whose competitive career had included at least 1 year playing for Sheffield VC including Ben Pipes who was the GB men’s captain.

Also, numerous players after finishing their academic career at one of the universities and playing for the team have gone on to play professional volleyball in Europe and beyond.  The latest is Zak Hadgett who has just signed for Orion in the Dutch volleyball league Ersdivisie.

How has the COVID 19 impacted on your club? In addition to not playing and training are there other ways you have been impacted?

Obviously with the lockdown it has meant that volleyball has gone from being a fundamental part of a lot of people’s lives in our club, to almost nothing. Volleyball is a great way to not just keep fit and enjoy yourself, but it also helps individuals to socialise and meet new people. Having this taken away from everybody has likely played a big part in people’s mental wellbeing over the past 3 months and will continue to have an impact, it’s important that we can get back to at least have some training sessions to allow for that level of normality to come back into people’s lives once again.

What have you been doing to keep in touch with you players/ members?

Our committee has been keeping in regular contact with each other and following the updates that Volleyball England have been providing in addition to the government advice. Coaches have been in contact with their teams to keep everyone up to date with any information they may need and have been trying to keep up the good spirits throughout.

We have utilised our Twitter and Facebook accounts to keep people in touch with news as it becomes available.

Planning for next season has also been part of our ongoing agenda. Trying to work out which players will be playing next season and those that will not. This is proving an obvious challenge with the uncertainty around when the season will restart again and what volleyball will be like at that point.

Tells us about any of your clubs’ members who have gone above and beyond during this difficult time?

One individual that has gone above and beyond as they have done every year for the club is our Club Secretary, Gerry McArdle. Once the season came to the sudden halt that it did back in March we were in a position where we had a number of players that had paid their fees for the season, but were obviously not going to benefit from this early payment when it came to April. Gerry spent countless hours working everything out to determine which players were owed, how much it was etc. We all know volleyball is a community sport and we are all volunteers, but without the involvement from Gerry over the past few years our club would not be in the same position as it is now.

What do you think will be the biggest challenges when returning to the court?

The obvious challenge will be trying to play with social distancing rules in place. We don’t believe that we can really return to playing Volleyball until the social distancing measures are removed, as this makes the sport impossible to play. Cleaning volleyballs and nets is the easier part of returning to the sport, playing the sport itself will be the challenge. Fundamentally, the phased return of everything over the last few weeks and the upcoming months is all about accepting risk, volleyball will eventually be much the same. Players will have to be prepared that when they return the risk of COVID-19 will likely to be still there and the important part is what we do if a member of our club comes down with COVID-19.

The club in general face an uncertain future as our base is run by All Saints RC School and so we are still uncertain when the venue will re-open as we believe it does not fall under government guidance for leisure centres.

In addition, the COVID-19 situation may well have an impact on students coming to the Sheffield universities in September.  The club relies heavily on student involvement, especially the Men’s Super League side, and this could have a serious impact on the coming season.

What support could the foundation offer clubs once the lockdown is over?

The key part will be the thorough guidance on how the sport can be played without breaking the government guidelines at the stage they are issued. Including specific information on the types of wipes to be used on volleyballs or travelling to away games with team members or even putting up and taking nets down. It may also be beneficial for a survey to be undertaken by each club to understand their thoughts and opinions on returning.