Rebel TV crew covering national finals for BBC Sport

Essex students are covering the national Volleyball Super 8 Finals for the BBC this weekend.

The Volleyball England Super 8s Finals sees the top teams in the National Volleyball League competing for this season's men's and women's title.

The team from Rebel, the University of Essex Students’ Union’s media network, includes students from the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, the Department of Language and Linguistics, the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Department of Psychology and the Department of Sociology. They are travelling to the National Volleyball Centre in Kettering to cover the games this Saturday and Sunday.

People can tune in online via the BBC Sport website and through the red button on their Smart TVs.

Peter Coxell, Societies and Creative Studios Coordinator for the Students’ Union, said: “This is a group of students who have learnt everything to make this broadcast happen from scratch with Rebel; they started with no experience and they learnt how to operate the cameras, how to set up the live broadcast equipment and how to create the graphics. They’ve also had a steep learning curve about volleyball itself!

“It’s a really exciting project that we’ve been working on for a few months now with Volleyball England – and understandably we’re pretty excited about it! It’s really been an incredible opportunity for the students who are involved and we’re hoping to run more projects like this in the future.”

Essex’s Performance Volleyball coach Alex Porter suggested the idea to Volleyball England and has worked with the Rebel team to develop their knowledge of volleyball and explain the various requirements including live scoreboards and graphics.

• Watch Rebels' promo for this weekend's action

You can watch the Saturday games  and Sunday games on the BBC website.