The six-day camp was held at the Flora Hill Stadium for the 2001-02 age group where some of the country’s most exciting young volleyball talent was on show.

“It has been another fantastic camp here in Bendigo with 87 athletes involved this year,” camp program director Les Young said this week.

“It’s a very demanding six days on the back of most of the athletes having just spent a week playing in the School’s Cup.

“We generally had two practice sessions a day going for a couple of hours each that involved a lot of skill work and game work, and we also had lectures at night on various topics such as strength and conditioning, hydration, team behaviors and those types of things.

“It usually started around 8.30am each day and they weren’t finished until around 9pm, so it was certainly a hectic schedule.”

Young said the expectation out of the camp was it would produce at least two to three future volleyball Olympians for Australia.

“We’d expect to see out of this sort of age group in the future two to three Olympians, and another 10 to 12 guys who would also go on to play in the national senior team,” Young said.

“And we’d like to think as many as 40 of them would get professional scholarships or contracts overseas, so they are the sort of numbers we’d be looking at producing from the 87 in Bendigo.”

Those 87 invited to the 2001-02 age group men’s camp in Bendigo have included Bendigo Academy of Sport members Liam Clegg, Lewis Roberts, Bailey Keck and Will Mandersloot.

The BAS has also had athletes invited to the 2003-04 age group men’s camp in Melbourne, plus the women’s development camps in Churchill, Gippsland.

The development camps will help select Australian Youth teams to travel to Thailand next year.