CASTING OUT THE NET
Targeting colleges for new members, Volleyball Ireland has big ambitions
DIVAS were central to one of the success stories f or Volleyball Ireland in a ravaged year. Divas – or Developing Inspiring Volleyball Activators – were student leaders trained to help spread the good news about the sport in higher education institutions around the country.
This was a project f unded through Sport Ireland’s Women in Sport programme, designed to introduce the sport to student communities.
It was also an example of the imaginative plans that less heralded sports use to great effect – and of the vibrant ideas that are helping to boost the numbers of women taking part i n Irish sport.
Grainne Culliton is the president of Volleyball Ireland, and in discussing the Diva programme, she recalls the effect involvement in the sport had on her student life.
‘Teenagers go to colleges and can get distracted, but when I went to college volleyball was so well set up in DCU, that it became my social life,’ she says.
‘My first day walking into volleyball, we didn’t have a sports centre at the time and we had to go down to St Pat’s (in Drumcondra). I was 17, away from home for the first time, and I walked in and stood at the door.
‘Then I turned to leave and this guy said “Where are you going? Where are you from?” All of a sudden I was playing volleyball, and it was like walking into a family reunion.
‘And I never l ooked back, because it was so welcoming.’
There can’t be many administrators in Irish sport who evangelise with the passion of Grainne Culliton. Her passion for volleyball sounds unflagging, and she says the organisation has used the disruption wrought by Covid19 to reassess how it does its business.
Volleyball is an interesting sport in the discussion on female participation. It is, traditionally, one that has attracted women in strong numbers, and they constitute the majority of its current membership.
‘Our split is more in favour of females, maybe 60:40,’ she says.
‘We have a very healthy involvement of females, and if anything we push at younger age-groups to push for l ads to think of volleyball.
‘We ran a Transition Year programme for years under Mary Lawlor, a former teacher and a very, very talented Irish volleyball coach. That was about taking female Transition Year students, and going into primary schools and teaching a type of volleyball called spikeball.
‘Now we’ve developed the Diva programme to go into third-level.
We started this last year and we have 10 what we call activators, and they are trained to deliver volleyball within colleges.
‘That’s because we’ve found one of the biggest areas where we’re losing players, females and males, is in colleges.’
It is, in its way, refreshing to hear someone who occupies a sporting leadership position disc uss membership without specific emphasis on the number of women taking part.
Volleyball’s historic strength in attracting women is an obvious strength, but the sport is still dealing with significant issues arising from lockdowns and rolling restrictions.
One round of the senior national leagues was played in October, before the lights went out again.
‘We played round one of the senior national leagues successfully, because we were considered part of the elite group of athletes that were allowed to continue,’ explains Culliton.
‘The following week it all ended, and at around the same time some of the schools were getting a bit tetchy about allowing volleyball teams or clubs to train in their halls.
‘They were just a bit nervous when the numbers (of cases) started going up so much.’
In that context, lockdown was a clean solution in the short-term.
‘From the playing perspective, it has been quite frustrating. We don’t disagree with the levels brought in by the Government. We’re getting very good guidance from Sport Ireland, and they are hand-holding us all through it.
‘Probably what we’ll do is count the first weekend’s games, then discount weeks two to seven, and then pick up on the second part of the season.’
That, of course, is contingent
‘The World Congress blew my mind’
on the general situation in the country improving, but the sporting interruptions have made time for longer-term planning.
‘It has given us a chance to take a step back. We’re currently reviewing our strategy again, which probably we would have left for another year.
‘Why not review it now when we’re losing half a season if not a season. It has given us a chance to look at that, to look at what the plans were, to look at what has worked and what hasn’t.
‘We’ve completely changed how we’re communicating with the membership, and the staff have been busy. They arranged, for example, a volleyball camp for 150 kids over the Easter.’
Sport Ireland has targetted improved gender diversity on sporting boards as part of its attempts to strengthen the case of women in sport.
This is part of its Women in Sport policy published last year. At that time, women made up an average of 24 per cent of boards. By last March, that was up to 29 per cent.
Women represent 63 per cent of the board of Volleyball Ireland. That figure is second only to the Camogie Association, which as a women’s sport might be expected to have a majority of women on its board.
Grainne Culliton understands the aim, but is also content that it doesn’t apply to volleyball. ‘Gender has never been an issue for us,’ she says, but appreciates it is an issue that needs addressing in some cases.
‘Of course if there are no women being allowed and there are issues, deal with that and there are ways of dealing with that, just the same as if there are other issues with boards.’
She is coming up to her ninth year as a member of the board of Volleyball Ireland.
‘When I joined it, I thought Ireland is small and we think small. Yet you look at our rugby team, our golfers, we’ve had snooker players who were world No1s.
‘But it’s an excuse sometimes: we’re a small sport in a small country and that’s okay. But I went to my first world congress and it blew my mind.
‘It was the mindset there: don’t use excuses.
‘Let’s work on the basis of no excuses. And we held an Olympic qualifier last year in Bettystown.’
That was in beach volleyball, and beaches form a part of future plans, too.
Volleyball Ireland received a total of €71,500, €21,500 of which is part of the club resilience fund and will be directed towards the eventual re-start of club activity.
The remaining €50,000, under an innovation funding scheme, which will be used to install 15 sets of permanent outdoor volleyball posts on beaches and in public parks around the country.
‘The dream is to have them in all the main towns in Ireland. At first, we’ll push for one in each of t he 26 counties,’ explains Culliton.
‘If you’re a foreigner that lands here and you wonder how you integrate, you see that people play volleyball and if a few of them turn up and play, then the kids playing in school join in, and then you have nationalities mixing, and volleyball really is one of the best sports for that.’
‘The dream is to have posts in all the main towns‘