It was devastating. I couldn’t have written this a few days ago. We, the Great Britain Women’s Volleyball Team, received the news that there isn’t enough money for us to stay together as a squad over winter, nor to compete in a full schedule of matches next summer. is week.

At 28 I felt like the whole meaning of my life had just been pulled out from under my feet and all the sacrifices made, career and personal life too - that I’ve made to follow my Olympic Volleyball dream all seemed to have been for nothing.

The bad news was delivered on Tuesday night. Despite our team ticking all the boxes to move to Slovenia and compete in the MEVZA (Middle European Volleyball Zonal Association) Inter-country league for the upcoming Winter season, we were told it is no longer an option because of a lack of money. And that wasn’t all.

There was even more bad news to come. The full time programme currently based in Sheffield is also over as of August 2010 and there isn’t enough money for a full competition schedule next summer, the  last summer before the Olympics.  This leaves are our planned preparations, put in place in order for usso we could to achieve our performance targets in 2012, in shatterstatters.

So, what now? We aren’t going to give up.

We are going to take control of our destiny and try to raise the funds we need ourselves. Our Olympic Dream will not end here. To keep our dream alive we will need to raise £500,000 through donations and sponsorship and we will need to do it quickly.

To sustain a high performing program, enable a summer of quality International volleyball, and the chance to compete as a team for the winter leading up to the Olympics, myself, my team mates and all our coaches are embarking on a 300 mile bike ride from Sheffield, the current home of British Volleyball, to Earls Court Arena, the Olympic Volleyball Venue. Cycle 250 has been born!!! I don’t think I have gone on a bike ride since I was 12, and due to a rather bony behind I am currently on the hunt for a comfy, heavily padded bike seat!!!

I am thankful I sat on the bad news for a few days allowing it to sink in and to get some perspective. Reviewing our summer so far I am feeling much more upbeat. We have consistently shown that we can compete with some of the best teams in the world.  The progress we have made in the last year is huge and the belief we have in each other and the team to overcome this challenge is immense.

Our team isn’t gifted with great height, I don’t think I have ever seen a 6fin 5in British girl. However,, the Eastern European teams seem to be able to find at least six of them! What we do have over these teams though is the ability to utsmart them and use our speed and variation to fox them. We are starting to show how this works - but to develop this style is complex and takes time. Playing together year round is the way forward to embed this.

This summer we have come across some of the best volleyball players in the world, as well as some of the tallest, and time after time we have shown that we can mix it with them. The results may not be there just yet but we have never been closer. Going 30-32 against Japan, ranked fifth in the world is no accident and it is the style of play the Japanese utilise that we are aspiring towards. Results are important, we know that and we desperately want them, it just takes time and I am confident the results will come.

We have now made a name for ourselves in the world of volleyball but we are still relatively unknown in our own country. We are consistently being praised by our opponents and we have already being been given a place in 2012 by the FIVB who because they believe us to be of awe are good enough to compete. It’s competitive standard, it is just a shame that our own Country country can’t see the benefits of financially supporting a team sport who which would go a long way to creating the legacy UK Sport and the Government keep going on about.

We are exactly where we want to be in performance terms with two years to go to the Olympics and we are on track to achieve our goal of finishing in the top eight in the Olympics. Once you get to the quarter finals anything can happen with the support of a home crowd. All we want is to be the best we can be.

I now find myself in the middle of a busy summer of International Volleyball making frantic calls to my agent to see if he can find me a decent contract abroad for the upcoming season. In an ideal world I would like to go away with some of my team mates so I can continue working on the style of offence we want to run. Being the setter for our team, and therefore the “playmaker”, means that this is important for me and the team.

Not all is lost. If most of us can get get placed in decent clubs in Europe we will all have the opportunity to play matches throughout the winter and we will come back better and more experienced as individuals. It will then be a case of pulling it all together as a team. I just hope we have found the finances by that point to ensure we have something to come back to.

If all goes well I will be packing my life into a bag come August, moving out of my flat in Sheffield and trying to make a home for myself somewhere for the next 8 months. Hopefully a base will be found for next summer as the prospect of coming home to nothing is a bit daunting as well as trying to find somewhere to live for the remaining 4 months of the year. It may be a case of “Mum and Dad I’m moving back home!!!!” which for me, at 28, is a step backwards.

Lucy Wicks is the captain of Britain's volleyball team

British Volleyball is represented by davidwelchmanagement.com