Cfac.net.au

To identify future Olympic gold medallists, today The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), in partnership with Sport Australia and Volleyball Australia has commenced an Australian-first training facility for all-weather beach volleyball.

The AIS has redesigned two new indoor beach volleyball courts from an existing multi-purpose training venue on site in Canberra next to the existing indoor nets.

Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy – 2019 World Championship Bronze Medallists as well as Natalie Cook – Olympic Gold Medallist were joined in Canberra in an official launch of the new facility and signaled a new era for Australian volleyball.

The indoor beach courts which have athletes train for indoor and beach as part of the same program are all part of Volleyball Australia’s vision in transforming the Centre of Excellence scholarship program at the AIS. There are cameras and large screen to improve the performance.

The Centre of Excellence, which has traditionally had an indoor only focus is home to 15 male and 15 female athletes and will now be known as the Australian Volleyball Academy.

Peter Conde – AIS CEO said that the best indoor athletes already training full-time on site made perfect sense with the decision to re-purpose the existing facility. This means athletes can have all high performance needs and their training met in one place.

With an integrated full-time training program designed to achieve international volleyball success, the Australian Volleyball Academy will host the next generation of elite volleyball players.To identify and develop the next Olympic Gold Medallist in beach volleyball is a key role of the program.

They were really pleased to provide further support to the beach program and be able to extend the AIS on-site offering to Volleyball Australia. Joining with the teams at Volleyball Australia and Sport Australia, they had complemented the existing indoor training environment by having created a fit-for-purpose all-weather facility.