TLDR;
How do you make the courts in your area suitable for volleyball? Bribes? Sneak in in the night and install them yourself? Glue the posts to the floor? Concerted education campaign about what is meant by anchored to the floor? Leave a comment below, I’m dying to find a better way than my way, currently…
Ireland is almost like the utopian paradise that James Naismith and William Morgan must have been picturing when they were inventing sports to be played inside in Massachusetts in the winter.
It’s wet, outdoor volleyball can be challenging, why not build a bunch of halls to get really, really good at an indoor sports that require athleticism and good hand-eye coordination so those Gaelic footballers and hurlers have something to do when it’s hailing sideways and the smaller players on the pitch have blown out into the Irish Sea?
So close…
One of the things that drives me absolutely CRAZY about Ireland is how they’ve built a whole bunch of halls around the country to a very specific spec that is nearly good enough to hold two volleyball courts (and then one big one across the middle).
I’m very lucky to be near Castlepark School in Dalkey, which has two almost full-sized courts in the hall (the end lines could use another meter or so of serving space). Dalkey Devils work out of there, and I run a lot of national team trainings there, because I can fall out of my house into the gym1.
Every other hall built with a school in Ireland was built to this spec that just barely fits a whole basketball court in and means you have a bunch of players serving from inside the end line. Or even counting the lower foot or so of the wall as “in,” in some halls.
That can be irritating, but that’s definitely not my main beef.
Safety is Job #1
There are some amazing new halls built in the area (Dalkey) for schools, and, as our club has grown quite a bit, I was thrilled that we’d have some sort of space, no matter the size.
But when I’ve gone to take a look, more often than not, the floors are pristine, super clean, really nice… and there is not a single space to anchor the volleyball posts to the ground. I even popped down to the Killorglin Sports Complex, which is a BEAUTIFUL facility down in Kerry, to check out their space, and they have these great sport court floors, but no spots for anchors for volleyball posts.
Instead, the solution I’ve seen schools implement is to put out their freestanding volleyball posts, stack the unused set of posts on the base of the other ones, and then stack some kettlebells on the pile of posts.
The objection I hear more often than anything is about safety, but the jerry-rigged kettlebell catapult they’ve just built is arguably more dangerous than any anchor and covering you might put in the floor.
This, by the way, is what a good cover for a floor anchor looks like:
They’re flush with the ground and pop out with a suction cup, and I’ve not heard of these causing an issue with a basketball player or badminton player or anyone… but I could be wrong.
But, with another project coming into the area, I’m seeing similar objections:
I do think a large part of the problem is educating the stakeholders about what exactly is meant by anchors, where they go, how they don’t interfere with other sports, but also educating them about what is enabled by supporting volleyball in our halls. When we travel for the AMB tournament in Portugal I’m always amazed at the halls that accommodate THREE volleyball courts, with plenty of room to serve, seating for fans. And it’s all the halls, no matter the area, no matter the school.
So how do you do it, in your area?
How do you make the courts in your area suitable for volleyball? Leave a comment below, I’m dying to find a better way than my way, currently…
By the way, the confusion that referring to a sports hall as a ‘gym’ causes is always entertaining. I use gym and hall interchangeably (hall being an addition to my vocab since moving here), but when you say gym in Ireland you usually mean like a weight room.