As we are slowly approaching to end of indoor volleyball season, Skyball BV Coaching Team is super excited to introduce another eventful summer season 2022 of beach volleyball in our favourite place in Bridlington, at South Cliff Beach. Become a Skyballer (the registration for new season starts on 25th March) and don’t lose opportunity to spend another fantastic summer with us.
Let’s talk dates and structure:
We have prepared 4 Skyballer trainings (mini clinics), starting with a big Season Opener Clinic on 10/04/2022.
Following it up straight in 2 weeks time, on 23/04/2022.
Our aim will be to maximise your opportunity to be ready for the competitive season, so frequency of dates and intensity of training is invested ahead of the eventful summer.
If you are not a player who is planning to compete on beach, don’t worry, we have you covered.
Our sessions are prepared for all levels and interests, from beginners to advanced players, also to have a bit of fun.
Who would not want to….😃 whilst spending nice time with our beach volleyball community, feeling great whilst playing the sport we all love, but also we can be achieving some of your person goals, like getting tanned and learn how to dive around. 😃
BV Clinic will be prepared for you with a 4 hours program, and if you are wondering how is it going to look like, here is what we will be aiming for:
09.30 – 10.00
Arrivals & Introductions (H&S, etc)
10.00 – 10.20
Warm Up
10.20 – 12.15
Training
12.15 – 12.45
Lunch
12:45 – 12:50
Warm Up Ahead of Games
12.50 – 13.50
Games / King & Queen of the court
13.50 – 14:00
Cool Down
Skyballer training timings
So, we hope you have your calendar ready in hand and noting these dates to join us on sunny beaches in Bridlington.
10/4/2022
23/4/2022
15/5/2022
17/7/2022
Each court will have maximum of 8 players, based on levels and genders as much as possible. We would like to be flexible allowing us to accommodate everyone’s level of skills and desire. Please help us with this, when registering to events, indicating, if you are beginner, intermediate of advanced player.
We are looking forward to seeing you, get your sunglasses out, all tanning creams, plenty of water and positive energy to share with everyone around you. Let’s make the most of this season, as we all know we can’t take anything for granted these days.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us on info@skyballclub.co.uk, we will try to help as much as we can.
This blog was never to happen… buy yeah here you go… Playing beach volleyball ‘’is about sleeping in tents, vans under piers and stars, about taking chances, about failing and failing and failing, over and over again, until you find a single moment to cling on, the one that makes it all worth it, the one that keeps you going, vindicating this failures as necessary lessons’’ Travis Mewhirter.
I’d like to be very clear here, this piece of ‘’no art’’ is my point of view and my perception of things that did happen on golden sands of Brid. This shameless writing and the pictures will bring to you a bit of memories but also some facts, pictures and stats. Blog will consist of three parts released over next ten years:
Part 1 – Kings of Brid
Part 2 – Queens of Brid
Part 3 – Meet the Insane Beach Lovers
KINGS OF BRID
2020 and Covid-19 or year that never kicked off…. We were all getting ready to start our traditional preseason trainings consisting of two – three meetings a week in Brid with clear purpose to bring us into standard for playing with a good effect at the UK Beach Tour.
Getting Skyball Team players hot and ready for the season 2020 but also managing Yorkshire Series, Grand Slam Bridlington it was my goal, objective, my every year pathway and summer journey.
Instead we found ourselves in times of deadly pandemic and our dreams for the season faded away – although some teams still managed to play this crazy summer at closed events in London, personally I see this year as competition (no training) write off. These unpresented circumstances supported me in deciding to use this time to reflect and bring to you the past five years of Yorkshire Series, eight years of two-a-side BridBeach, our own King of the Beach invitational and the biggie – The Grand Slam Bridlington.
This blog is a travel in time, beach stories, numbers and players that we call Kings of Brid -the semi-professional athletes who sacrificed time, money, family life, life occupations to succeed, prove to themselves and others that all what’s count is ‘winning by all possible means’ but also getting better as an athlete and person… even if feeling of winning was just for a minute and money you earn was maybe £150 but the ‘real deal’ was to do that in front of 150-200 people watching, spectating and screaming your name and that was a moment when you succeeded and you felt like your name is never to be forgotten…
Beginnings and Brid Beach…
It all begun in 2010 – first Brid Beach… 400 players and Adam M. from York Volleyball Club taking a gold with Piotrek in two a side ultimate knock out competition. I watched this final game after being eliminated in round two and I knew that this is it – like a ‘’light bulb moment’’ and new life objective a goal. I’ll come back here, and I will win this one day. ‘’This is my game’’ Pete M.
The regular camping, playing beach emerged effectively from 2011 – our ethos was ‘’play all day, camp and party at the night’’ – pretty much every weekend was filled up with a beach volley action. We didn’t have to wait long for the results, 2011 Whitby Open Beach Fest it was home affair Adam/Piotrek beating Pete and Jiri in the final.
Brid Beach 2 a side 2010 winners Adam / Piotr.
Whitby 2011 – Beach fest finalists.
2012 – 2015 regular training and weekends at Brid continues. More indoor volleyball friends and players join Pete and Adam… Slawek, Michal, Arek, Kupens, Dinos, Tomas, Bartus , Bartek from Liverpool, Robert, Pascal, Jozef and many more …. Monthly training also started in Loughborough with Sebastian, Kuba and Dawid.. These four seasons its pure dominance in local beach volleyball scene including Brid Beach two a side, Tynemouth (played once win once with all Kings final).
2011 Brid Beach.
Training camp 2013.Post training social – 2013.2014 – Loughborough training.
2014 Brid Beach 2-a-side Finalists.
2015 Tynemouth “All Kings Final”.2015 Brid Beach 2-a-side.. Michal just in action with Ben Pipes.2016 Brid Beach Finalists.2017 Brid Beach 2-a-side winners.2018 the last Brid Beach attended by Kings.
Brid Beach
Years
Winners
2010
Adam Meszczynski/Piotr
2011
Thomas Ward/Neil White
2012
Adam Meszczynski /Damian Imshoot
2013
Adam Meszczynski/Adam Kupka
2014
Adam Meszczynski/Adam Kupka
2015
Arek Herod/Michal Feterlich
2016
Piotr Makowski/Tomas Laba
2017
Arek Herod/Bartosz Baran
2018
Pitt James/Mohammad Basha
Brid Beach Winners.
VEBT– Kings or no Kings…
2014 the year that we all got wild cards at the VEBT Skegness, here we came to play at the National Tour. We all packed up and off we went to some shitty caravan park on outside of this used to be a great coast town… Hopes were truly big, first time at the nationals, an elite beach volleyball competition. The reality kicked in very quickly exposing our level in battles against best beach athletes in UK… Double elimination or Brazilian system and after two matches almost all Kings were ready to pack their belongings and drive back up North.
There was something special though about Skegness and it was a silver medal for Kuba and Dawid – Loughborough Bound – we all stayed an supported our boys which I’m sure it helped them to reach that fantastic result. Those boys trained with us so we knew that we have potential to successfully compete at the national level but we needed a clear pathway, more opportunities to play at the competitive level not only once a year at BridBeach or other occasional events in Redcar, Whitby, Tynemouth but foremost we needed a proper beach training including attending at the international camps alongside UK top beach athletes…
Skegness 2014 – Dawid Skora and Kuba Korczyk with Silver at the VEBT and those who stayed to support them.
Yorkshire Series
The answer to our defeats at Skeggy comes year later in 2015… ‘’Yorkshire Series is the 2-a-side beach volleyball competition initiated by a group of friends from Leeds VC Penny and Dave Speers and York VC Pete and Marz who saw it was good, important and wanted. We took this idea to the next level introducing for the first time a series of 4 events in 2015. In 2016 YS was recognized by Volleyball England and the players were awarded national ranking points for their achievements, 2017 saw YS came into partnership with Active Coast from East Riding of Yorkshire to further promote and grow the sport on the East Coast. Now YS are integral part of new founded in 2018 Skyball Beach Volleyball Club and well establish beach ball event on UKBT tour calendar. Rest is the history.’’ This is quick summary of Yorkshire Series by Marzena my comrade/wife someone who devoted a lot in this big almost lifetime project of bringing beach volleyball and one day dominate the whole of the beach scene in UK.
2017 Series 1 with 16 teams per gender and infamous final Poland vs Latvia.
Yorkshire Series for the last five years continuously proved to be a tremendous battlefield in showcasing which team is best in the North of England. Over those years we ran single gender tournaments but also invitational King and Queen style extravaganza, the events that brought some of the best plays Bridlington and North East beaches have ever seen. Epic battles, sweat, tears, blood and sand …
I consider myself as beach athlete, beach coach, beach father and husband, event organiser I would like to choose these top three finals of Yorkshire Series from the past 5 years. So let’s start with the third:
3) Makowski/Kupka – Bukowski/Bakowski 1-2 (21-12/19-21/16-18) – it’s all part of my painful YS history of the finals as a beach athlete – I think this one was the closets one with good 15 people crowd watching it. I won’t blame cramps we should take this one in straight two sets.
2) Bukowski/Herczeg – Garcia-Kidd/Neveykin 1-2 – this was like watching Grand Slam final. Mark brought a spectacular plays and response from Northern pair was astonishing, but it wasn’t enough to beat Weymouth 2014 winner.
1) Skora/Kupka – Meszczynski/Bakowski 2-1 (21-12/17-21/15-13) – top quality beach volleyball match and great come back by Kupka and Skora. I’m pretty sure that pair Meszczynski/Bakowski lost this one due to fatigue and cramps which got much worse in the final – remember that up North we always play full matches so sometimes it takes 5 long games before you even reach the final. In this occasion final losers faced Bukowski/Modestas in extreme almost murdering three setter semi-final – nevertheless Dawid and Adam played some of the best beach volleyball I have seen during these years.
Yorkshire Series
Year
Series
Winners
Runners Up
2015
I
Meszczynski/Bakowski
Herczeg/Neubrandt
2015
II
Meszczynski/Bakowski
Feterlich/Herod
2015
III
Herczeg/Berndt
Meszczynski/Bakowski
2015
IV
Feterlich/Herod
Makowski/Meszczynski
2016
I
Meszczynski/Bakowski
Kupka/Herod
2016
II
Meszczynski/Bakowski
Herczeg/Anderson
2016
III
Kupka/Kammer
Smelovs/Ivanovs
2016
IV
Bukowski/Modestas
Makowski/Bakowski
2017
I
Meszczynski/Kupka
Smelovs/Ivanovs
2017
II
Kupka/Skora
Meszczynski/Bakowski
2017
III
Bukowski/Bakowski
Makowski/Kupka
2017
IV
Bukowski/Meszczynski
Makowski/Kupka
2018
I
Sheaf/Garcia-Kid
Meszczynski/Sobieracki
2018
II
Garcia-Kid/Neveykin
Bukowski/Herczeg
2019
I
Meszczynski/Sobieracki
Makowski/Kammer
2019
II
Bukowski/Meszczynski
Makowski/Gega
2019
III
Feterlich/Kammer
Bakowski/Makin
Invitational King of the Brid Beach
Year
King
2016
Adam Meszczynski
2017
Ignemars Ivanonvs
2015 – First Series ever and Adam/Bartek with gold medals.Having a rest while getting some nutrition.
Don’t block ‘’loose cannon’’ Kupka
Adam M aka Beach Psycho – 8 times winner at Yorkshire Series.
Yorkshire Series 2018 for the first time as part of UKBT.
Skyball BVC/Active Coast/Ollie and Ben
2018 new born club, baby Sky and juniors beach training starts showing up future hopes.
Jitka, Said jumped on board with the idea of creation of the Beach Volleyball Club in December of 2017. Marz and Pete loved the idea of putting existing tournaments, training camps and training days into more professional outlook where we could start effectively developing new players, bring Skyball juniors team that would eventually dominate the beach scene up North and further, promote the beach game to everyone no matter the level and get the best of beach to our home.
On the picture below Skyball BVC is officially open and day is celebrated with my closets beach volleyball family and our friends partners Active Coast.
Volleyball England couldn’t deliver VEBT after 2016 due to lack of funding and the new UKBT era emerged. Skyball BVC and myself had always a dream of hosting a high performance beach volleyball event in UK.
Bridlington Grand Slams 2018 and 2019 were fully powered by Active Coast, Richies Café and Skyball BVC delivered with UKBT cooperation. Those events were epic and truly amazing tournaments showcasing best beach athletes from UK and beyond. Every Grand Slam brought spectators and best beach players from UK and beyond this would include Issa Batrane, Javier Bello, Jake Sheaf, Phil Smith, Mark Garcia-Kid, Arnaud Loisou (France), Sam Dunbavin and many more. I found delivering and running Brid Grand Slams very special, powerful but also challenging and rewarding. I would never be able to get these huge and expensive events going without my wife, my beach family, Adam, Paul from Active Coast and Jake from UKBT – ‘’The best is yet to come, and won’t that be fine? You think you’ve seen the sun, but you ain’t seen it shine’’ – Frank Sinatra.
Bridlington Grand Slams were particularly successful for Queens of Brid (more on this in the next chapter) but Kings had they say too with bronze medal by Meszczynski/Sobieracki in 2019 and Westfal/Gega reaching quarters in 2018…
2018 and this feeling when Skyball Team brings professional beach back to Bridlington… big shout to Adam Toes and Paul Silvestre from Active Coats!Grand Slam 2019, Winners Batrane/Louiseou have several caps for England and France on FIVB 1 to 4 star events.
Grand Slam Bridlington
Year
Winners
Runners Up
2018
Sheaf/Smith
Bello/Batrane
2019
Louiseou/Batrane
Garcia-Kid/Smith
The first part of my blog I dedicate to Dave Speers, Jozef Pecovsky, Said Lopez, John Howard and Adam Meszczynski our own YS/Skyball franchise.
It was only early morning when the sun breached through my window. Hope and joy overtook my fast-asleep head, but finally my alarm went off and I could oversee the beautiful morning. As always, I had to do my morning chores: make bed, eat breakfast and brush my teeth. After a while, my mum told us some exciting news that we were going to the beach. WHOO! As quickly as possible I packed up everything I needed and after a short while we were setting off on a long 1-hour journey.
I was really excited in the car scanning my eyes at the wonderful nature we came across. It wasn’t long until I got bored, then more bored and then so bored that I started to whine. Luckily, we were only 10 minutes away from the destination and I could see a faded ocean in the distance. I was certainly steamed up about this. As the time went past, we had finally got there.
I got out the car first and jumped with cheer. I helped my parents with the unpacking and ran with pure speed to the beach. By the time I got there, I witnessed something I have never seen before. My brain filled up with so many questions. It looked so interesting, I wanted to go and play myself. I waited for my dad and asked him what it was; he said it was volleyball. It seemed a lot of fun and interesting and as we were walking down, I noticed this banner that said ‘free to join’. After a lot of convincing my parents, I finally joined and had so much fun! They taught me lots of different techniques such as digging, setting and spiking, but soon it was time go and do something else.
It was a very sunny day and so we decided to have a swim in the cold ocean. My mum decided not to go in as it was way too cold for her. Later she regretted her decision. Both I and my dad loved splashing in the refreshing sea. We swam, jumped, dived and played endlessly with the strong but pleasant waves. Unfortunately, it was time to go and we left the beach with wonderful memories.
Coming back was not as nice as being on the beach. I sat with gallons of sand around my body. UGHH. Once we got back, I sprinted for the shower not noticing that I left a massive sand trail on my way in. When I finished, I rested until I went to sleep. I had a dream, a remarkable dream about becoming a pro volleyballer, travelling around the world, becoming famous and the best of all, having my parents proud of me.
We interviewed our sponsor Emilyn Holland to find out more about her work and why she decided to financially support the club this season.
A beach massage in progress.Emilyn with the Skyball Team.
1. How did you start playing volleyball?
I started playing volleyball because I wanted a new sport and also to help me to recover from losing my late husband. I also love to keep fit and clear my head out after a busy schedule at work.
2. What made you play beach volley?
I’ve always love the beach and always wanted to play beach volleyball but I never had the time so now I want to make time for it and enjoy it.
3. Why did you decide to sponsor Skyball?
I’ve decided to sponsor Skyball because I am a fan of the Skyball family and what they are doing is great specially for the young players to be developed at their talents.
4. What treatments do you offer?
I offer many treatments from Hair to Beauty treatments but my favourite treatment to do is Hilotuina as it helps balance the meridians and the (QI) Energy of the body.
Emilyn offers wide range of Beauty and treatment services in York.
5. What do others say about your treatments?
You can read my review on my Google Business also at treat well they’ve responded very well and I have had good results.
6. What are your aspirations for the future?
My aspiration in the future is to help others in need specially when they have injuries, increase my clientele and be the best in everything I do.
7. Do you have any discounts for the volleyball family players?
Skyball beach volleyball players (registered club members) get 25% off from a treatment and if you recommend a patient you get 50%. When booking a treatment with Emilyn please quote “Skyballer”.
The Skyball beach volleyball club would like to thank Emilyn for her sponsorship for 2022 season and her continuous support since we started the club 5 years ago.
You can find out more and book your treatment with Emilyn via her website https://hilotuina.com/ or with details below.
Also you can follow her or give her a like on her social media channels.
Our dates for next beach volleyball season are out! You can join us for popular beach volleyball clinics and then practice your skills during UKBT tournaments. Everyone is welcome no matter of your skills or age so give beach volleyball a go! Registration will open in early spring and we will announce it on our social media. For now, click below to find out more about our events.
