About Volleyball Development Camps
VbDC is the oldest commercial volleyball training organisation in the United Kingdom. It began in 2005 as a single summer camp for all ranges of athletic ability, and has moved on to offer seven distinct levels of training and a variety of other services. The core of VbDC activities remains the training, conducted through a range of weekend camps, workshops and week-long residential and day camps.
VbDC events take place every month. Today, the different levels of the VbDC curriculum enable athletes aged 8 to adult to participate in camps tailored to their skill and experience.
VbDC also conducts other activities, including one-day workshops for positional players; weekend programmes to help mature recreational players enjoy the game more; immersive English language tuition and cultural outings for residential athletes from abroad; travel team trips to international youth tournaments (VbDC’s Lions team, pictured right in red shirt at a Dutch Under-19 tournament); and outreach activities for schools and leisure centres, such as “air volleyball” for pensioners – similar to walking football or walking basketball – and sessions for neurodivergent or disabled youngsters.
Beyond the Court: Supporting
Long-Term Athlete Development
Aspects of the game covering players’ technical form and game tactics are introduced from early ages. Guest speakers, including physiotherapists, dieticians, Olympic athletes and referees discuss the game during lunch breaks, professional and national teams have joined training sessions, and sports science specialists analyse individual athlete’s performance. Many athletes return year after year and progress through the range of camps. Some have become long-term friends in whom VbDC has had an active involvement in helping them chart their sports future with a number becoming US university or national team coaches, professional athletes, and in one case a member of their Olympic squad.
Activities have grown off court, too, with VbDC providing pro bono assistance to athletes in their search for scholarships to US, British and Canadian universities, organizing courses for the qualification of coaches and game officials, offering first aid courses specifically for volleyball, and sponsoring local, university and English National League clubs.
But the founding guideline on which VbDC was founded has not changed over time: Assemble highly qualified coaches in the best facilities available and create a course of instruction that will help disciplined, dedicated volleyball athletes take their performance to a higher level.
