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Society of the Year Awards 2019 Nottingham Volleyball Club - Their Experience

By Anna Keefe, President of Nottingham Volleyball Club

On Wednesday 4th December, the University of Nottingham Volleyball Club received the honour of partaking in The Society of the Year Awards 2019. Thanks to the votes of our loyal club supporters, we won the Sports and Wellbeing award and were invited to attend the annual SOYA awards lunch held in a beautiful, central London location overlooking the Thames. It was a lovely occasion and we were honoured to be given the opportunity to showcase our club and meet BUCS representative and University of Nottingham Alumni James Bramley who presented us with the award.

Creating our video in the first stage of our application was challenging. The beginning of the season is always a hectic time for sports clubs and our committee was busy organising pre-season, running team trials and promoting volleyball within our university. Despite this, our talented social media secretaries did an outstanding job of representing our club in one short video. We aimed to show our sport in action as well as providing some insight into what we do as a club from committee members who dedicate a lot of time and effort to ensuring the club is thriving. The key to our success was the work ethic and commitment of the entire committee to creating an application which truly showcased our club and conveyed our dedication to promoting wellbeing through a sport we all love. In the voting stage, our social and social media secs were instrumental in promoting our video and encouraging our club supporters to vote for us in the election. The competition was very close with three amazing clubs and videos in the running, however our ability to get the whole club and wider fan base on board in supporting us was key to our success.  

Making the journey down to London for the day was very much worth it for the incredible event Bright Network kindly put on for us. The venue was stunning, and it was a fantastic opportunity to network with different companies and speak about our club. Our presentation was a group effort with each member of committee speaking about their individual roles and how we all work together to build a successful club and ensure our members are enjoying their time as part of the Volleyball club family. We also thoroughly enjoyed listening to the other presentations; not only was it fascinating to hear about the amazing achievements of other clubs and societies from around the country, but it also offered some insight into how other societies operate and provided some inspiration on how we might be able to do even more as a club. 

I have been told by my fellow committee that we cannot go without mentioning the lunch itself, one committee member described the lunch as being ‘simply out of this world’ and it was the topic of conversation for much of the journey home! 

Bright Network truly made us all feel valued and appreciated for the work we do in running our club. On behalf of the University of Nottingham Volleyball club we would like to sincerely thank everyone involved in organising the event and supporting our club.