One of the leading volleyball photographers in the country, Steve Smith, attended our week-long summer camps in August to shoot hundreds of photos of the athletes. As usual Steve captured some superb images of the athletes in action and maybe one of them is of your child that you would like to have for the family album.

Steve has posted these photos on his website, and Volleyball Development Camps is making a request: if the sport of volleyball has given something to your child, could you give something back to volleyball?  Even though Steve offers the photos free to download, our request is that if you download one could you please make an on-line donation to the Volleyball England Foundation, the fundraising arm of Volleyball England, our sport’s national governing body.

Funds raised by the Volleyball England Foundation are used to assist new volleyball clubs, established clubs which are launching youth programs, or schools that are beginning to offer volleyball as one of their after-school activities. It is all a part of helping the sport of youth volleyball grow in this country and your donations will play a big part in supporting the effort.

Our suggestion is that a donation of £5 per photo is made to the Volleyball England Foundation.

First, go to Steve’s website:  www.sandsphotos.co.uk

• In the menu on the left is a link marked Portfolio, and when you hover over that you will come to a dropdown menu which includes a link for Sports.
• Click on that and you will come to a page with a number of photo collections. Click the one marked Volleyball 2021.
• That will take you to a page where you will find the VbDC camp your child attended; click that and you will find the photos. If you want to download one, there is a download icon in the lower right corner.

Once you have downloaded your photo files, you then go to this hyperlink   DONATE   and follow the on-screen instructions.

Thank you for helping the Volleyball England Foundation raise funds needed to expand the sport in this country.

There has been a lot of confusion about the covid 19 regulations concerning the age limits for attending indoor sports event since the summer, in part because Government guidelines have undergone several revisions since the pandemic began. We have occasionally been asked “to make an exception.” The answer to this request is always “no”. VbDC strictly follows the guidelines set by Government and our sports’ governing body, Volleyball England.

As of 2 December there has been a slight change and very welcome to the age rule regarding Under 18s as follows:

exemption to the rule of six … appl(ies) for U18s, disabled athletes and sport for educational purposes. Supervisors and coaches are allowed into junior sessions, but spectators are not. The definition of U18 includes young people who were 17 at the start of the academic year (1 September, 2020), even if they turn 18 during the remainder of that year.

Please help us to keep our training programmes and competitive events safe, and within the law, for all who take part by following this age guideline.

It’s been 5 long months but we are on the verge of getting back to playing some volleyball.

Starting on Monday 17th August we will be running not one, not two but THREE camps all strictly adhering to Government, Volleyball England and venue guidelines.

Given the long break and the restrictions on numbers training together at one time it is no surprise that the camps are pretty much sold out.

There has been an awful lot of work going on behind the scenes to make sure that everything is ready for the “new normal”, Risk Assesments have been written, all the necessary screening paperwork has been completed, sanitisation arrangements have been made and  off-court social distancing procedures have been implemented.

We are ready and cannot wait to welcome you back

This is the one we have been waiting for.

Volleyball England have had approval from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) for the resumption of most volleyball activity including indoor, under certain restrictions and guidelines.

This means that we are now able to push ahead, working with our venues and coaches in planning for a safe return to sport for our camps in the middle of August.

There is still much to be done, fortunately we started planning for a return many weeks ago looking at the different possible scenarios. There are one or two points that still need to be clarified which we will be working through in the coming days.

This “Green Light” is what we all have been waiting for, so we can now look forward to welcoming you back to one of our camps.

We continue to update our Q-Camp page with content during this lock-down period with workout exercises for fitness and some ball handling drills that can be done at home. We have just added a second Coaches Classic match, this is where our coaches recommend a match and highlight some of the more subtle points to look out for.

Meanwhile our Facebook page features some of the more quirky ideas and features

BREAKING NEWS

The FIVB have announced that their Volleyball TV channel will be available for FREE between 8th May and 31st August 2020.

This means that Full Match replays of hundreds of matches from the VNL 2018 and 2019,the 2018 FIVB Volleyball World Championships, plus the FIVB Volleyball Club World Championships, can now be watched for free, which of course includes these two matches.

You still need to signup, but simply use the FREEPASS promotional code to subscribe.

Like you, we at Volleyball Development Camps have been closely following developments in the coronavirus crisis. The pace of events has been so rapid that it has been impossible to chart a path for our forthcoming activities, and only last week it seemed like some small sports activities might be able to resume after an initial two-week closure of schools.

However, with the Prime Minister’s announcement of the unprecedented measures that we must now take to protect our society and our lives, we now know that we will be unable to hold the Easter Break Skills Camp at the time originally scheduled.

As we await further government instructions on sports gatherings, VbDC will continue to offer volleyball training. But you won’t have to gather in a group to train. Virtual training to help athletes maintain their volleyball skills are being created for the VbDC Q Camp – Q for quarantine – which is now live on the VbDC website  and will be updated on a regular basis.

Have a look at the Q Camp, we may have to stop our physical training and competing as part of our contribution to the global effort to stop the coronavirus pandemic, but it doesn’t mean we have to stop enjoying volleyball – the best sport in the world.