Our west regional development officer managed to escape the confines of home working today to deliver some much-needed equipment to one of our affiliated Glasgow secondary schools.It’s a project that was started away back in February of this year which saw 14 Glasgow secondaries send teams to a festival at the Emirates organised by Scottish volleyball and supported by Glasgow Life. This pilot festival was designed to be replicated within some identified host schools throughout the remainder of the 19/20 academic year.
Hillpark Secondary nominated themselves as a potential host venue and with a four court badminton hall would have been ideal, apart from the fact they had no long net. Our West RDO worked closely with Derek Byrne the PE department head and Stephen Thompson the local active schools coordinator to secure the funding for a purpose made Huck long net system.
Unfortunately, like most areas of our sport Covid-19 intervened and there were no other festivals held either last school year or this one. It was only when Education Scotland updated guidance to allow curriculum PE back inside at the beginning of November that the net could be delivered and erected in the school.Although the current restrictions will not allow for a repeat of the festival in January any time soon, Hillpark PE department is certainly ready and raring to host it when they do. In the meantime, Volleyball is very much back on the school curriculum and the long net allows for full class participation in a socially distanced environment.
Derek Byrne PE faculty head added “this is a brilliant resource for our school and we can’t thank Blair, Andy and Scottish volleyball enough for their support in this project. We all really enjoyed the event at the Emirates back in February and are looking forward to hosting our own here at Hillpark as soon as it’s deemed safe to do so”.
