December 19th, Loughborough University

SW youngsters joined around 350 young people from the sports of Athletics, Boccia, Cycling, Football, Tennis, Swimming and Volleyball descended upon Loughborough University for the Youth Sport Trust National Talent Camp.

The camp will see 200 coaches, 100 athletes, and 50 officials come together to participate in a unique multi-sport, multi-role, three dimensional camp, to increase individual aspiration, ambition, and develop empathy. Throughout the camp, young people will be actively encouraged to dream and be ambitious on where their talent can take them, develop a holistic view of their own performance and understand how they will deliver when they are back in the environment of their own sport.

For most of the youngsters, this will be the first step on their development programme as they will go on to complete further courses and begin to deliver in their local area. Volleyball England is being represented by 23 young coaches; Harry Dawson, Joe Machin, Jordan Bytheway, Oksana Birch, Chelsea-Nicole Mitchell, Amy Predeth, Vasilis Mandilaris, Emily Rogers, Rob Bellamy, Zachary Omoshebi, Guy Leathley, Dominika Szary, Dana Brookes, Eve Powell, Will Mulligan, Jacob Jones, Ciara Morrell, Samuel Holmshaw, Tommy Cripps, Callum Bavister, Charlie Thorpe, Linnea-Marie Byrne and Natalia Evangelou.

There are 5 officials; Florence Owen, Hannah Loy, Kira Hambleton, Eldar Yifrah, Victoria Wilkins and there are also 10 athletes who have been selected by their national team coaches; Katy Begley, Arran Simon, Richard James, Emma Hebbes, Molly Ann Van Essen, Eva Elias, Rheanne Lord, Dan Harwood, Harry Jones and Issa Batrane.

The focus of day one was upon developing a philosophy, a dream and getting to know others in the multi-sport groups that they will be working with for the next 4 days.

Roll on Day 2 as we look forward to early morning circuits, a live observation/feedback session and discussions around honesty and ethics.