YVC Juniors play in SW squads at Inter Regional Championships

Volleyball England hosted their Inter Regional Championships over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend and the u17 girls, u15 boys and u17 boys squads representing the SW all included representatives from Yeovil VC! This is a great first for the club which, being relatively small, has struggled historically to maintain sufficient numbers to consistently run dedicated junior sessions throughout the year.

One of the positives that have come from the post COVID lockdowns is an increased interest from juniors wanting to get into playing volleyball. This is something that many volleyball clubs have seen and bodes well for the sport's future in the UK. The club now runs a well attended, dedicated junior session weekly that can cater for a wide range of ages and abilities and has entered junior teams into various local competitions.

However, one of the downsides of the COVID lockdowns has been that some of our older juniors have missed out on the opportunity to play in competitions when they were younger and gain valuable experience. So this was the first, and for some the last, opportunity to play in the IRCs!

The SWVA held monthly junior training sessions since the start of the season that juniors from across the region were invited to attend and YVC members were among those that took part hoping the make the final squads. This provided our club members valuable additional, top level coaching with the best of their peers from the region - a useful experience in itself! During the season the squad players were gradually down selected until a squad of 12 players for each team remained that would attend the IRC.

While the tournament was held in Leicester, involving long minibus trips for the SW squad, the matches were streamed live online allowing all to follow the tournament with many from the club supporting from afar!

While the SW teams final positions were mixed, one thing that was clear from watching the event was how much all the players have gained from the experience and hopefully that will help accelerate their future volleyball development. Well done all!