During these difficult times, I wanted to say a big thank you to those people who give up their time to make our club work.
Here, at Leicester Athena, we are really fortunate to have a group of people who are committed to helping us grow. As a player, you can sometimes have no idea of the amount of effort that goes on behind the scenes. I am going to mention. Few of our fabulous volunteers here: Sarah is one of our founders. She is captain of the NVL squad, she is club secretary, she coaches the regional league squad and is the one people turn to when they want a sensible answer. Charlie is captain of the local league squad and she is our player engagement officer 9i.e. if anyone has a problem, they can go to her). Sarah and Charlie have been working REALLY hard recently to make sure we can get back to training. They have bene contacting venues and Volleyball England to clarify what we can and cannot do. Without them, we would have no volleyball right now. Sam is our safeguarding officer. With our growing junior section, having someone like Sam around helps enormously and makes sure we have the right behaviours and processes in place to keep our juniors are as safe as possible. We have our coaches, of course. Steve Jones brings a huge amount of experience and, this year, is being supported by Roli and Kim. As I mentioned, Sarah coaches who regional league squad supported by Petra. Paul coaches the local league and the junior squad. Alongside Sarah and Charlie, as captains, we have Edyta who is the new regional league captain, helped by her vice-captain, Ioana. Then we have committee members such as Alysia and Kristy who look after our finances and arrange social events. But they are also part of the soul of the club as they have been with us from the start. That is an impressive cast list, but we would always welcome more support. Personally, I would like one or two of our parents to get involved as well as a couple of juniors to make sure juniors have a voice when we make decision. But that is just me .. always wanting a bit more. To those people mentioned above and to all the others who help in other ways such as arranging nights out, line-judging, asking questions, being engaged … THANK YOU!!!!!!
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Yes, we are back playing volleyball.
We started on Saturday with juniors at DMU Watershed. We had 4 new faces and one of the new girls was asked if she wanted train with the regional squad as well because she impressed that much. On Sunday morning, Sarah took charge of the regional squad for the first time, alongside new captain, Edyta. A total of 9 players came along which is a good turnout considering another 3 were at the beach tournament in Kettering. In the afternoon, Paul ran the first local league training at New College and we had 8 players turn up. Again, we had 2 new faces and we had 3 juniors who cannot make Saturdays so will train with the local league squad. Finally, Steve Jones took training for the national league squad, There were 11 players there and they experienced Steve's brand of high intensity and highly technical coaching. I heard that there were some very tired people at the end of the day. No matter which squad you were in, whether coach or player, one thing that united us all ... it felt AMAZING to be back on court! Yes, we are BACK!
After an eternity (actually 6 months), we are starting training again. Juniors Our juniors are going to kick things off at DMU Watershed on Saturday 19th September. They train from 10 am until noon. Regional League Our new look regional squad, complete with new coaches Sarah and Petra, start on Sunday 20th September from 10 am til noon at New College. Local League Our local league group will train from 2 pm until 4 pm on Sunday at New College. National League Finally, the national league squad meet up with their new coach, Steve Jones, on Sunday from 4 pm until 6. A huge thank you to the venues for working so well with us, and a thank you to Sarah and Charlie for all the planning, especially Charlie for her work in developing our COVID-19 risk assessment and policy (click here to see our COVID-19 documentation). Lastly, we are recruiting. We are looking for regional league, local league and junior players. So come join us and get into volleyball. |
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