Tell us how you got started?

It all started about 5 years ago, at that time Pete and Marz Makowski (Co-founders of Skyball) started putting together people to play beach volleyball in the North of England where there were no clubs at that time.

Other than "The Big Brid" there were no events on the beach so people's reception of this mini tournaments was quite good and shortly after the Yorkshire Series began!. People started travelling from different areas of the UK to come and play in the tournaments, there was also interest to learn about the sport a bit more and that's when Pete and Marz started putting together training sessions and so on.

it came to a point where the system grew so much in a couple of years that it couldn't be done anymore by 2 people, that's when me and my wife (Said and Jitka Lopez) stepped in to help.

We created the club in winter of 2017 and worked hard to put together the plan for that season. Active Coast is and has been a massive partner for us in terms of organisation and deployment of events, they helped us start all of this up and we keep on working with them to deliver the best possible events so a huge thanks to them for their trust in us.

Shortly after, our name started to ring a bit more around the UK and we kept on growing so we added Gabi Pecovska, Jozef Pecovski, Martyn Quick and Hanna Grzesik to the team. It seems we were doing something right as the events kept growing, we are so lucky to have such a wonderful set of people working with us. In the last few months, we added The Howard family to the package to make sure we can provide the best possible environment but also play!

I think the most remarkable thing we have done is to put together such a great community here in the North where we have made friends from many different places, we had people coming to our events from Manchester, The Midlands, Scotland, London... etc and it's great to see the sport developing here.

How has the COVID 19 impacted on your events?

It has been tough in all areas to be honest, most of us are quite crazy about beach volleyball and would go the extra mile just to have a few more minutes on the sand. The club has grown massively the last couple of years, specially around the tournaments, we had planned several events and we were all looking forward to them. For most of us Volleyball is our safe zone where we put away our worries or problems and we can really have a good time with friends. In a situation like this, where we need to stay at home to protect our loved ones, you know that you are doing the right thing and the time to come back to the sand will come, but that does not make it any easier when you get good weather outside.

Luckily for us, the club does not have any costs as we don't need to pay for a hall or any employees otherwise this could have made the situation way worse. Our prayers to all those families around the world that have been heavily affected economically by this pandemic.

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

We have been trying to keep our social media active, we ran several sessions to try to keep people active throughout this difficult time. We ran mobility sessions, we put together a list of exercises that people could do at home to keep improving their individual skills (as long as you have a bit of space at home you can keep bouncing the ball) We encouraged people to keep in touch with the ball, to exercise and move. As we have mentioned before, this situation is probably more of a mental than a physical challenge, so the club has tried to help people to keep their minds of the quarantine by staying active, so we have kept in touch with most of them in one way or another

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

I would like to personally give our ladies a big shout-out. Jitka, Marz, Gabi and Hanna have always been trying to find different ways that we could connect people in such a disconnected time. They did and do such a good job brainstorming different things we can do to get people together and develop the club even further. Also we would like to mention Hania which helps us massively with our social media outreach.

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

For me personally it's going to be my massive belly! Joking aside, whilst we transition into our normal lives we think the biggest challenge is going to be around ensuring people's safety whilst playing, there are still questions around how we will transition and how we will be able to run events. For all of us, the overall safety of the players is our biggest concern, we know how people is struggling through this difficult time and we want to make sure once we are back we all are safe and sound to enjoy the weather as much as we can

We won't potentially have much time this season but the last thing we would like to see is for somebody to fall sick after all this.

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

Coming back from our previous point, we believe having clear guidance on how to run events and keep people safe will be our highest priority. As we said before the last thing we want is for people to fall sick! The government provides lots of information that might not be the easiest to digest therefore a specific document for both indoor and outdoor activities would be much appreciated.

To find out more about Skyball go to https://skyballclub.co.uk/

Thank you Said Lopez from Skyball