Welcome to East Hants Volleyball Club

In the early 1990s Arsene DeKesel, one of our club's founders, set up a volleyball club at Bohunt School in Liphook after moving into the area from Southampton. From this emerged the teams of Bohunt and Mill Chase (Bordon) that played against each other and attended numerous tournaments in Belgium (Arsene's home country), Southampton, the New Forest and Roke Manor.

The natural progression was to enter the Portsmouth Volleyball Association league.

It later became known to Arsene that volleyball was being played at The Petersfield School and eventually it was decided to merge the clubs to form the East Hants Volleyball Club in order to develop the sport in East Hampshire.

As time went on a number players joined the club from a wide area, many of whom were attracted by the wide variety in ages and skill levels of the membership, culminating in club teams playing in the Southern Region league alongside members of the Purbrook team.

Over the years the club and its members have continued to organise activities in schools, and participated in the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Games and the Portsmouth Volleyball Association league and cup, with great success at that level.

By the 2002/03 season it became clear that to progress any further as a club it was necessary to raise the level of competition and this resulted in the club entering teams in Division III of both the Men's and the Women's English National Volleyball Leagues. The close association with the Portsmouth COMAX (Women's NVL Division I) team was formalised in 2003 when the Portsmouth and East Hants Women's teams merged, however the East Hants Men's team continued in the National League in its own right. The aim of entering the National League was to improve even further the standards of the top players in the club with a view to using that experience to help develop the other club members. Unfortunately, due to a combination of circumstances, this experiment was not seen to be a success and in 2004 it was decided that the club and the National Volleyball League teams would go their separate ways. Despite this, there is still a close association with those teams and we wish them all the best for their futures.

Despite reaching these levels, the club still prides itself on being approachable for the beginner, the junior and, in particular, has had a lot of success in attracting foreign members from Scotland, Belgium, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Hungary and USA.

In addition we have a busy social calendar with many summer tournaments to attend (including our own "Volleyball Picnic") and, the highlight of the year, the Christmas Dinner (generally held some time in mid-January).

We hope that you find our website an enjoyable experience and, if you wish to give our club a visit, please feel free. Details of our training sessions can be found by clicking the "Training" link on the navigation menu.