Issa Batrane

How I Started

I started playing Indoors Volleyball for my hometown club Richmond Volleyball Club in South West London as a junior player around the age of 13/14. Then as a junior I progressed through the ranks within the club representing the men’s first team around the age of 15/16 years old before I was then selected to be apart of the England Juniors Indoor National Team having captained my England regional team to gold at the UK School Games. I then moved to a full time volleyball academy, The LeAF Academy in Bournemouth, England. It was there when I was 16/17 that after my first full indoor year the coaches asked me to try also play some beach volleyball this summer. It was more for my touch but to continue with becoming more explosive with my jump on the indoors as a Passer/Hitter and Right Side Spiker. Then in that first summer playing on the British Beach Volleyball National Tour I managed to win the Junior British Championships and placed top 5 in various senior events which sparked interest from the Junior Beach Volleyball National team coaches to have me train and potentially compete on the sand.

I then decided to continue playing indoors as I was pursuing a scholarship to go to university but then doing as much beach volleyball as I could when it came round to that season until I decided to go with full time beach volleyball only back in 2017.

My Greatest Achievement

My greatest achievement to date probably still has to be my first Senior British Championship gold medal. Although I have a lot of other bigger goals in my career currently, this one still sticks with me as it was my first. Being young was a great milestone to achieve and still to this day it makes me so happy but also so hungry to do more and achieve greatness even at my young age in the sport.

My greatest Challenge

I can’t really think of any one challenge that has been overly difficult. I’ve been injured, i’ve lost relatives, i’ve not been selected for events…. these are just some that come to mind but I think probably not having the easiest upbringing growing up shaped me to have that level of resilience and that nature of fighting through the good and the bad times because it is very rare that things go smoothly in the world and all I would say is keep your chin up and know your worth. You can do great things and be successful but all you need to do is keep taking one step at a time and that is what I continue to tell myself in order to keep on being better.

My Future Goals

My hopes and future goals for our team firstly is to compete in our major home games, the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England but the big end goal for our team of myself and my partner Freddie is a future World Championships and Olympic Games. That is the pinnacle of our sport and we are young but we are hungry and work hard with our team to be better and work smarter every week.

Outside of Volleyball it truly is first to inspire the younger generation even though I am still considered young myself. I would also like to grow the game within the UK as well as inspiring people from deprived backgrounds like myself to compete in this sport a lot more.

This along with my passion in Sustainability to help people make better choices each day that can have an impact on what the future of our planet will be like are areas I really hope to have an impact in with my career and are future goals of mine.