Volleyball at the University of Portsmouth

My name is Elizaveta, or Liz, and I am an international student from Estonia studying BSc (Hons) Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology at Portsmouth. I’m also the Vice-President of the Volleyball club, which I’m going to talk about now.

For starters, I just wanted to let you know that I’d never played volleyball before uni. I joined the club in September of my second year because it seemed like a fun team sport. I hadn’t played team sports before but I’d heard that volleyball is one of the friendliest clubs, so I thought ‘perfect!’.

In my club, there are three main levels that you can play volleyball: beginner (play), development (social) and British Universities and Colleges Sports – BUCS (team). 

• Beginner sessions involve the obvious, such as jogging, warm up and playing games 
• Development is for people that want to become better and learn the basics of the sport 
• BUCS is usually for people who are skilled and competitive enough to represent our uni against other unis out there 

Our Women’s 1 won their competition last year and crushed their opponents, which granted us another women’s team! This year they've stayed in the League, too.

I started at the development level, because I wanted to learn to play properly and then I joined play sessions every week, too – to have even more playtime. By February, we had formed a friends group and I started going to even more sessions. We originally held these sessions at the Mountbatten Leisure Centre but now we hold them at the uni’s brand-new Ravelin Sports Centre. We've also formed a team outside of uni and we’ve played in tournaments in London and Gosport (a town close to Portsmouth).

This year, I joined Women’s 2 and played in BUCS games until January, and later I joined Women’s 1 as well. So you can progress from one level to another, it just depends on what you are looking to get out of your club membership. My club has already held one tournament and we plan to hold another one this year!

Another huge part of my club is our social aspect. We go ice-skating together, paintballing, kart racing, and sometimes we just have get-togethers in someone’s student halls – playing pool, table tennis, or board games.

Volleyball has brought a lot of fun and passion into my life. It makes my uni life so much more than just studying and revising for exams. It’s allowed me to make friends that I’d love to keep in touch with after finishing uni and I met my partner at this club. 

Volleyball is a huge part of my life now, and I would’ve never expected it to be – I just wanted to have some fun! That’s why it's a really good idea to try out new clubs and activities that might interest you because you never know what can turn into a passion.

I’m going to be here next year and it’s great to see more new faces and meet new people, so I hope to meet everyone reading this too.

Make sure to follow University of Portsmouth Volleyball insta page @uopvolleyball and if you’ve got any questions that involve the club, you're welcome to email us at volleyball@port.ac.uk.

Author: Elizaveta Lartsenko, undergraduate student, BSc (Hons) Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology University of Portsmouth