Volleyball volunteer profile - Richard Guest

Profiling our Volleyball Volunteers this week - our first volunteer is Richard Guest

Richard started playing volleyball at Newcastle Staffs VC, his home town club in his early teens and played as part of the England age groups set-up and in National Junior Championship Teams, and the NVL top flight squad as a teenager.

Richard moved to Liverpool City when he was at University playing in the National Cup Final, and then became a stalwart at City of Salford as both a player and then coach. When he moved back to his home town Richard then became a coach at Newcastle Staffs, and a key Trustee once the club had achieved charitable status.

Richard works in the Insurance sector and readily put his legal and insurance expertise into action for the club as covid-19 emerged, taking on our covid-19 lead.

This has led to a significant amount of work… as a club we have around 150 members and play at four venues, all of which react to the government announcements and NGB regulations on a differing timescale and with different asks.

Being based in an area that experienced a range of fluctuations in COVID Tier status, and differences in where our members lived (i.e. for a period Stoke was Tier 2/3 whilst Newcastle-under-Lyme was Tier 1/2) this became ever more complex and time consuming. Richard ran briefings for our Trustees and Members, and repeatedly for our coaches, and continues to provide support every week.

Without Richard’s input and commitment to really lead and own this, would have become an issue that could have overwhelmed the volunteer time of all of our Trustees. This has meant we’ve been able to continue to drive the club forward in this horrendous 12-15 months.

Newcastle Staff and all the volleyball community would like to express their thanks to Ricahard for all he has done to support our Volleyball Family.

If you have a volunteer you would like us to recognise during National Volunteer week jus send me an email to foundation@volleyballengland.org.