Ukrainian teens inspire Leitrim’s first volleyball club in Drumshanbo

After over 50 years of Leitrim schools competing at the highest levels in volleyball, the county has its first club.​ What started out as a group of children from Ukraine looking for something to do during the summer has become Leitrim’s first volleyball club.

The small crew of teenagers living around Drumshanbo were whiling away the summer playing some volleyball on the court outside of the Mayflower community centre in the town, and before long, they met another group from Ballinamore.

“All of them are Ukrainians, basically, and they started connecting and playing together. That's how they became friends,” said Nataliya Byelyakova, secretary of Leitrim Volleyball Club.

As September rolled around, the evenings were growing shorter, and the kids were back to school, so parents began approaching Nataliya, a Ukrainian herself, living in Ireland since the early  2000s, who works with the Leitrim Development Company.

They wanted to see if there was a way for them to rent the hall for the children to play, but without a formal club, it was difficult.

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“It has to be insurance. There is a lot of paperwork that has to be done because, like, I'm not sure what's possible in Ukraine, but, like, in Ireland, you cannot just come from the street and let's play.”

There is a long history of Volleyball in the town, stretching back to the 1970s through the secondary school, Drumshanbo Vocational School (DVS), which has achieved success at the All-Ireland level, yet no club was ever established in the area.

“I said to myself, like, obviously, like, it's teenagers and teenagers, if you don't find for them what to do, they will end up on the street. And I said, OK, because I do work with youth, let's invest the time and do research on what is needed.”

Parents came together to form a committee for the new club, while a few parents had previous experience playing volleyball and were happy to coach, including some who played at a high level in Ukraine.

“We now have one coach who actually was playing on a national level in the games in Ukraine as well. He's really, really, really good, and the children feel that they are so excited, they're like, oh my God, he's so amazing.”

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The club was registered under Volleyball Ireland and was given kick-start funds from the Leitrim Development Company to get them through until they could attract more members.

They weren't long attracting a crowd after their open day in December brought in huge interest in the area. “There were so many people that I didn't know what to do,” laughs Byelyakova.

After only starting out with fewer than a dozen children, the club now hosts around 50 kids from a raft of nationalities, including Irish, Bulgarian, Polish, Brazilian and German.

Training out of the Mayflower, the club has four underage teams already, including two teams between 13 and 17.

The hall is a good space for them to train, and they have felt welcome, but they are working on obtaining investment from Leitrim County Council and Leitrim Sports Partnership to make it a more professional standard space so that they can host matches there.

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Despite being new, the club has already tasted national success through their U18 girls team who took silver in the Shield section of a national competition in January.

 The “Iron Women” competed in a field of 17 other teams, while playing with the bare minimum number of players and no substitutes in the day-long tournament.​

Many of the kids are also playing volleyball in the DVS and benefiting from training at both the school and the coaching they are getting at the club. Now that the club is set up, they want to grow and get more kids involved.

“We're planning to go maybe later on in primary schools to advertise ourselves a little bit more to start taking small children to prepare them, because obviously when they come into DVS, they will play much better.”