Starting a Roundnet Club by Joel Read and Ani Gallant
About the Authors: Joel and Ani are 2 of the executives at UNSW SpikeSoc, the biggest University Roundnet Club in Australia, they’ve been playing Roundnet for almost 2 years, and are super keen for more people to play the best sport in the world.
So, you play Roundnet, huh? You’ve been playing a fair bit, and you’re starting to think you’ve got the hang of it. You’re looking for some game time to try out that funky serve you’ve been practising. But, you have a problem, you only have 2 other friends that play, and it’s getting a bit boring rocking up to the park and not having four people to spike with. What are you going to do? Well, sounds like the best thing for you to do is to start your very own Roundnet Club!
This is exactly the position that we found ourselves in about a year ago. We were loving playing Roundnet, but we really struggled to find 4 people to play. We would go and borrow a Spikeball kit from the university office, and then spend 20 minutes looking for a fourth person. So, we decided to take the advice we’ve just given you, and we started a Roundnet Club.
To help you on your way, we’ve got you 6 tips to help you make your club a reality.
Number 1: Decide to start a Roundnet club.
That’s the hardest bit. But we reckon you can do it.
Number 2: Play as much Roundnet as you can, in the most public places you can.
To start your club, you’re going to need other people, so playing as much Roundnet as possible where other people can see it is the best way to get people interested. We love to play our games right near a spot at our university where a lot of people have to walk past in order to get to class. This has meant we’ve had heaps of people come up and ask what it is that we’re doing, which gives us a great opportunity to invite them to play and join the club.
Number 3: Do the nitty gritty stuff.
For us, we became an official society at our university. That requires legal things and reading documents and making a constitution and so on. For you, if you’re at university, ask your university’s office what you need to do. To start a club with Roundnet Australia is much easier, all you need to do is go to this link and do what it tells you. We recommend the best way to do all the boring stuff is with your friends over a pizza.
Number 4: Get active.
Start a Facebook page, invite your friends, organise pick-up games, leagues and even a tournament if you can. Here are some more links to help you organise these sorts of things.
Number 5: Repeat Number 2:
Keep playing, play everywhere you can, introduce as many people as possible as you can. Get good at teaching people how to play, because if you want your club to grow, you’re going to need to teach as many people as possible.
Number 6: Have Fun!
We can’t say this one enough. By far and away the most important thing for you to do is to keep having fun. Whether that’s by going and playing at the beach, or introducing some funky rules for a game, or whatever you want! Make sure that you’re enjoying playing Roundnet, because that is what will keep your motivation up, and it’s a well-known fact that fun is infectious.
Starting a club is not the easiest thing in the world to do, but it will teach you real life skills and by introducing people to the game you’ll get to meet people you never would’ve otherwise met. We hope that this encourages you to go ahead and start your very own Roundnet Club. We’re sure that you won’t regret it. Happy spiking everyone!