Return To Play Award

in partnership with Sport England & Volleyball England

These awards seek to help support sport and physical activity groups, clubs and organisations in responding to the immediate challenges of returning to play in a Covid-safe manner. Volleyball England and the Foundation are pleased to be helping clubs access funding and help kickstart club activity once more.

sitting VOLLEYBALL COMMUNITY - Award recipient

This award for £9.500 was to support our sitting volleyball teams across the country and the newly formed teams in receipt of Volleyball England Foundation grant funding, to ensure they return to play in as safe an environment.as we can make it.

The award was used to provide cleaning and sanitiser for players and equipment to ensure we meet the COVID safety guidance provided by the Government and Volleyball England as we return to play indoors. It also provided each team with a COVID net that would help to reduce the transmission of the infection as players sit face to face at the net. Nets were also purchased for GB training and VE competitions.

“Wow - this is quite the COVID safety pack for Sitting Bucks Volleyball Club!! Thank you so much for the support from The Volleyball England Foundation and Sport England. We will now be able to ensure the return to play for sitting is safer than ever.”

Steve Smith, Sitting Buck Member

East Midlands Volleyball Association (EMVA)

EMVA have 16 clubs playing in their regional leagues, man also take part in local and NVL competitions.

Instead of each club applying for a small grant it was decided, with Volleyball England Foundation support that they would put in a bid as a collective. There bid was successful and EMVA has been awarded £9.500 to provide hand sanitiser, PPE and cleaning equipment to each of the clubs to ensure they follow the VE and Government guidance when returning to play.

As many clubs are now playing outside ,as their facilities are not available or are being used as gyms providing socially distanced activity for their members, EMVA also secured funding tor outdoor nets that can be used by clubs to engage players back in to the game.

Paul Kaerger chair of EMVA is delighted with the award and would like to thank the Foundation for their support.

Bristol Spikers

Bristol Spikers is a junior club in the South West.

The club faced several challenges when returning to play.They wanted to offer a safe environment to the young people taking part in volleyball, they have reduced the number of participants at each session to reduce the risk by maintaining social distancing. Because of this they will require additional hall hire time to ensure they can clean the facility and equipment during their back-to-back sessions. They will have clear signage in the facility and will develop a one-way system for entrance and exit of the facility to ensure social distancing. . In addition, they requested funding for a further 12 volleyballs as they have split the sessions into smaller groups.

The grant of £2992 will help them ensure that all the young people taking part do so in the safest environment they can provide.

Bedminster Volleyball Club

Bedminster Volleyball Club is a grassroots community amateur sports club (CASC) that has been playing volleyball continuously in central and south Bristol since 1968.They were applying for this funding to help kickstart the club again in a COVID-19 compliant manner. They will be following the guidance provided by the Government and our NGB – Volleyball England.

To allow their adults to commence playing, as soon as possible, the club are moving their sessions outdoors. Because of the length of time since they were last came together, they would normally have a summer break, the club intend to continue to train outside until they return to playing inside in September. To increase their capacity outside they will need to purchase some additional outdoor systems. They have included an additional 3 sets of outside nets and associated equipment. Volleyballs for outside use are weighted differently to account for the wind and they don’t have the correct balls, so we have requested 16 outside volleyballs to allow us to run the sessions in this way.

The Return to Play grant of £2990 provided all the required funds for all the equipment and cleaning resources required for Bedminster to get their players back on court

Stourbridge Volleyball Club