Recently my daughter came home from school. She had learned what an inventor was and explained it to me. I replied by telling I’m an inventor myself, but she didn’t believe me at all, haha! I really liked this conversation with her, because she made me realize that I actually accomplished my childhood dreams with the invention of the VolleyWall.
This innovative structure was originally designed as a football wall, but it can also be used for tennis, padel and handball. Thanks to the reclined position and the curvature, the ball always bounces through the air back to the players, allowing them to play individually, in twos and fours.
Registered as a ‘Community Design (EU)‘, the VolleyWall is exclusively distributed by W&H-sports (general) and Vario Fields (artificial grass partner).
Development
Between the ages of twelve and fifteen I played in the youth academy of the professional club FC Den Bosch. During this period I not only trained at the club, but was also instructed to regularly shoot against the wall at home.
Almost ten years later I had long since retired from football, but I still enjoyed playing with a ball now and then. One day I shot at my old training wall at my parents’ house. Due to work in the garden, there was a pile of sand in front of this wall, held together by a wooden plate.
This plate was an obstacle at first, but soon it became a target after I discovered that the wooden plate bounced the ball back through the air. From this game, I desired to have a larger plate. So I build the following prototype out of wood and plastic:
As you can see in the video, there were two problems:
- The stiffness of the material was too low.
- Shooting to the side of the board ends your sequence.
So I started looking for a manufacturer who could make a curved and angled structure out of a decent material. I contacted Herbert van der Stelt and he was happy to help me out. This lead to the following prototype:
This version obviously works a whole lot better. We had to take care of the sound and the angle of the wall – in the video you can see the wall hanging on cables to determine the right angle – but after we fixed that, the wall was ready for use – and production.
Games
Once the VolleyWall was ready for production I have developed a set of games and challenges. More information can be found on the social media pages of the VolleyWall.
Distribution
W&H Sports B.V.
Haverstraat 71
2153 GD Nieuw Vennep
T: +31(0)252 683 300
E: info@whsports.nl
W: https://whsports.nl