Life's a beach for Hynes

Updated November 7 2012 - 1:20am, first published December 14 2008 - 11:21am
Karley Hynes.
Karley Hynes.

BEACH volleyball is the latest sport at which multi-talented Bendigo athlete Karley Hynes is making her mark on the international stage.The Maiden Gully teenager, who has already represented her country at indoor volleyball and schoolgirls netball, has been selected to attend the Australian Youth Olympic Festival in Sydney in January.The 16-year-old is the only Victorian among the four girls in the Australian contingent.She will pair up with Queenslander Taliqua Clancy to compete against some of the top junior players from nations including New Zealand, Norway, China and the US.Hynes has also been chosen as a member of the state under-17 beach volleyball team for the Australian junior championships, which will be held at South Melbourne beach from January 5-7.And she is part of a national talent identification squad for volleyball, which incorporates both the beach and indoor varieties.Australian Institute of Sport national beach volleyball program manager Simon Naismith said the Olympic Youth Festival would be Hynes’s first experience of international beach volleyball competition.She has been involved in the sport for less than 12 months, after being plucked from indoor volleyball by talent scouts and trained up to excel on the sand. “Karley is certainly one of our targeted young athletes for the future, such as the 2016 Olympic cycle and beyond,” Naismith said.He said she was presently in contention for a place in the national under-19 squad for the world youth beach volleyball championships in the middle of next year.“She is extremely strong and powerful for her age and that is a huge advantage,” Naismith said.“It allows her to hit the ball harder when she is serving and spiking, and can jump higher out of the sand.”Hynes has already enjoyed enormous success at indoor volleyball, representing Australia at the Asian junior championships in Taiwan and the Asian Cup youth titles in the Philippines in recent months.She was a member of the School Sport Australia national netball team that played in an international challenge in May against squads from New Zealand, Singapore and Sri Lanka, and is presently training with the Netball Victoria 17-and-under representative squad, from which a final side will be selected soon.Hynes, who is part of the Bendigo Bank Academy of Sport volleyball program, said she was looking forward to attending the Youth Olympic Festival, which was being held from January 14-18.“I was ecstatic to be chosen,” she said.“I initially thought it was just a festival and training situation, but it is like the real deal and they have lots of other sports involved, so it is quite an honour.”The event is run by the Australian Olympic Committee and aims to discover future Olympic champions and provide a competitive environment similar to the Olympic Games.Athletes aged 13-19 live in Olympic village-style accommodation, take part in an official opening ceremony featuring the lighting of the festival flame, and attend compulsory drug education seminars.Seventy-three athletes who had attended previous festivals were selected in the Beijing Olympic team and they won 22 medals between them.They included triathlete Emma Snowsill, cyclist Anna Meares, hurdler Sally McLellan and swimmer Jessicah Schipper.The 2009 festival will involve 1550 athletes from 27 countries competing in 17 sports.

Subscribe now for unlimited access.

$0/

(min cost $0)

or signup to continue reading

See subscription options

Get the latest Bendigo news in your inbox

Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date.

We care about the protection of your data. Read our Privacy Policy.