A scoreboard-objective team sport like volleyball may not have a lot in common with a judged sport such as ice dance. But that didn’t stop Camosun College coach Charles Parkinson from using recent Winter Olympic gold-medallists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir as an example to his volleyball players as the Chargers prepared for their biggest moment of the season.
Parkinson’s message was simple: Successful athletes are at their best when it counts the most. That’s what the Chargers aim to be as they host the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association men’s volleyball championship tournament at PISE gym on the Interurban campus, starting with their quarter-final opener tonight against wildcard entry and the Alberta runner-up Keano Huskies at 8 p.m.
“I told my players Virtue and Moir did not focus on winning. They focused on the moment. The ability to execute in the moment is what sport is all about,” said Parkinson.
“Focus on the process, and the outcome will take care of itself.”
Parkinson is the former national team captain who has done the colour commentary for CBC’s coverage of volleyball in the Summer Olympics from Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London and Rio from 1996 through 2016. He absorbs lessons from the international level and readily incorporates them into his college coaching, having led the Chargers to four consecutive Pacwest Conference titles and the 2015 national crown.
This season was a little different, knowing the Chargers had an automatic berth into nationals as host. Camosun began slowly in the Pacwest Conference regular season but then ended with a 7-1 run to finish third in the regular season at 13-11 before running the table once again in the playoffs and upsetting Island-rival and Pacwest regular-season champion Vancouver Island University Mariners (20-4) in the conference final in four sets. In doing so, the Chargers became the first team to win four consecutive Pacwest men’s volleyball championships since BCIT did it from 1971 to 1974.
“We wanted to go into nationals legitimately as Pacwest No. 1 and not just as the host team,” said Parkinson.
That is exactly how the Chargers are going in. This is a team that knows when to play best when it matters most.
“Peaking at the right moment is not serendipity. It's a scientific process,” said Parkinson.
“We need our guys at their best in February and March, not in September and October. It’s planning. You work your way backwards from when you need to peak. Now, at this time of the season, I just open the gate and let the dogs out.”
Volleyball is a popular sport on the Island, which has produced several Olympians, and the PISE gym will be packed this weekend. That brings its own unique pressure for the host Chargers.
Parkinson wants his players to be jacked up in front of the partisan home crowd, but not overly jacked: “There is a famous international sports study that shows as arousal goes up, performance goes up. But only to a point. The study also found that with over-stimulation, athletic performance declines.”
The other quarter-final matchups today have the Alberta-champion SAIT Trojans taking on wildcard Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu of Quebec at 1 p.m.; the wildcard VIU Mariners playing the Ontario-champion and top-ranked Fanshawe Falcons at 3 p.m.; and the Quebec-champion and three-year running national runners-up Titans de Limoilou against the Atlantic-champion St. Thomas Tommies at 6 p.m.
Players to watch include VIU’s standout hitter Braydon Brouwer; Ontario colleges player-of the-year Cole Jordan and Canadian U-21 national team player Andre Foreman, both of Fanshawe; Alberta colleges player-of-the-year Trent Mounter of SAIT; and Brazilian import and Pacwest playoffs MVP Eduardo Bida of the Chargers.
The national tournament continues through the semifinals Friday and final on Saturday.
