The squad with our favourite UGA physio in Athens, Georgia.
I received a text message from Papa George just the other day saying exactly this:
“hey time for a blog entry. I would think lots of people are interested in the outcome of your last chance tourn. in the D R .
otherwise whats up”
Nice dad. Punctuation and correct grammar… and spelling, are not actually his forte so we’ll cut him some slack on this one. Even though I did break the silence via my instagram a few days before, and even though George is actually an instagram sensation, he isn’t sporting an account. SO! This is for him and the others who don’t have the ‘gram. And anyone else who is just interested in a few more details of the last month.
Rewind a few months ago when Rudy was happily settled in Thessaloniki, Greece with his new club team and I was finishing out the summer with Team Canada. About a month into his new gig the team was told that the club was folding and so I was left wondering if going over there was worth it for this season or not. I was predominately wondering if playing in Greece would be the most ideal situation for me to be preparing for the Olympic Qualifiers, taking into consideration that Rudy would not have the opportunity to play in that city. In the end I decided that it would be much more beneficial for me to focus on my workouts and physiotherapy to get my body in as best shape it could be in than head to a club who I hadn’t worked with before. I worked closely with our strength coach and followed his program religiously every single day. I wanted to make my body a priority so after I gave myself a little pep talk that health is wealth and spending money during this period would have to be okay, I started seeing Robbie at Fort Physio who is nothing short of a magician. Strength training, HITT classes at Reward Fitness, stretching and mobilization every day, physiotherapy, chiropractor, and massages were all booked into my schedule. The other priority I had while being at home was of course, to get into the gym as much as possible. Trinity Western (ie. the LEC) graciously opened up their gym for Rudy and me to get in there whenever we needed and we often tacked onto either the men’s or women’s morning sessions or practices. Training mostly consisted of Rudy ripping balls at me and serving his a-serves for over an hour or two. My body hadn’t felt or moved this well in a very, very long time and my reception during training camp was one of the highest each day. Hard, focused work pays off.
Our individual sessions went extremely well (what’s a little marriage bonding time in the gym?) but the last two sessions before I departed for camp had me in a little bit of a twist. In each training I had two mini panic-attacks and still to this day, am not entirely sure why. Reflecting on that time, I am sure we were at our quota for individual training and on top of that, it was really hard to have every single rep critiqued and judged by me and Rudy (I am my own worst critic after all). Mostly, I think it was because I felt like a social experiment; I have never just solely trained on my own so I had no teammates to compare my skills to. For the last seven years I was always with a professional team before coming back to Team Canada so I knew exactly where my skills were at. This time? I knew I felt really good but I had no idea how I would be coming into training camp after three months of individual training. Well, turns out my fears were nothing to lose my cool over as coach Tom said that this was the best he had seen me play all summer (granted my brain was struggling for majority of the summer so this wasn’t too much of a surprise for me) and as I had mentioned above, my reception took some incredible leaps and bounds which was exactly the skill I put in the most time and effort.
Results of said social experiment: taking time off the beaten path is really good for one’s soul, brain, body, and overall athletic performance. I unfortunately had many coaches telling me that not going overseas was a big mistake and that playing, playing, and more playing would be the only thing beneficial. Well, proved them wrong I guess. As national team athletes we are required to play 12 months of the year; we get thrown into this rat race of trying to get bigger and better contracts year after year while putting our heart and soul into national team every summer. We have zero off seasons. We have no time to rest, no time to grieve, no time to date, no time to recover. And let me tell you that doing that year after year after year really takes a toll. As I told some of my teammates this season, it’s harder to say no than it is to keep going. Everyone expects us to play Team Canada and then go play professionally right away or clock in to every single tournament in the summer, but I believe that my career has been so long because I have made some boundaries for myself. I have competed in almost every tournament available with Team Canada but knowing that, in recent years I have taken a few shorter professional contracts or signed a month later to get some recovery time. Had I not listened a few years ago, I can say with absolutely certainty that I would not have got this far. Breaks are essential. Resetting is key. Focused training is necessary. And just because a “normal” approach works for someone does not mean it’s going to be beneficial for you.
So that’s a long winded explanation about me being VERY thankful for staying at home in the fall and working on the things that I needed to in order to increase my performance. And huge shoutout to my wonderful husband who I asked not to get a job and instead be my coach and daily workout buddy. It wasn’t easy for him to be asked every single day “what are you doing with your life” expecting his answer to be something ordinary and normal. But he came along on this extraordinary ride and dream of mine and did everything he could to increase my chances at an Olympic berth. I am deeply humbled by his love.
Now before I cut to more details of our training camp in Athens, Georgia, I want to share a blog post that I found in my phone notes. I am not exaggerating when I say I have over 300 notes full of lists, poems, quotes, to do’s and endless unfinished or unshared blogs. I normally would skip past this and just tell you what I learned during and after the tournament but I thought this would give you a little idea on how I was feeling going into the qualifiers. I believed in my bones that we were going to qualify for Tokyo.
This is the “unposted post” that I wrote when we landed in Santo Domingo:
Well, the time is now.
We are currently only days away from starting our final Olympic Qualifier tournament. I was interviewed yesterday and asked how we are feeling and what we will have to do to win/qualify which if you know this process, you know that those are tremendously detailed answers.
I tried to explain in less than thirty seconds that although it may look like our preparations have just been the past couple of weeks, or even this past summer, the real truth is that it has been since year one of the quadrennial, approximately three years ago, when we first set our sights on a berth to Tokyo. Our program had just transferred from Winnipeg to Richmond, we had a new head coach and entirely new coaching staff whose first language was not English and a brand new support staff (which was the same story as this past summer minus the English part). Every summer leading up to the Olympic trials is preparation FOR the Olympics and each team is perfecting their roster with what they need to qualify. Every international and national team is working around the Olympic Games, scheduling tournaments and games each year in a four year cycle.
The Olympics are at the peak of it all.
We have been pushing for our best team every summer for the past three years to continue moving forward for these moments we will soon experience.
After our last tournament in Puerto Rico where we won a bronze medal at the NORCECA championships, our team dispersed all over the globe as we do after our national team season is completed at the end of the summer or beginning of the fall. Majority of the team went overseas to join their professional squad. After Christmas, everyone flew in from Europe (and from home for those who were there for the holidays) to Athens, Georgia. Coach Tom Black is the head coach there so we came down to train at their university and bonus!, be on the same time zone as the Dominican Republic. Our team chose this destination to train at as opposed to going back to Richmond over Christmas in order to eliminate any distractions while we were training. That, and have access to all the facilities that will ultimately help us perform better on a day to day basis.
We’ve been taken care of very well since we arrived in Athens. We are staying at a little residence / apartment complex in downtown Athens called Game Day. Apparently this is rented out for UGA football games when they are in season. We have our own bedroom and bathroom but share a kitchen and living space with one other athlete. Fellow grandma Dani Smith is my roomie and I am loving every moment. Each morning we leave the apartments around 8am and all pile into a large sprinter van, driven by our teammate Max. Our daily routine includes individual court sessions, a morning team session (often focusing on serving and passing), physio and ice baths and other such treatments to keep our bodies going, lunch at the gym, individual video, then our three and a half hour team training finishing with more team video, dinner, and more treatment! We are at the gym for twelve hours a day which is something I have never experienced. It’s a grind to be there all day and eat two meals with the crew but it also feels so right. It feels that this is exactly what needed to happen. Each moment we are living and experiencing is just taking us one step closer to where we need to be to qualify.
I can’t even muster up one thing that I would have changed in this Olympic Qualifying preparation. I feel (and I know that everyone feels this too) that we can not be more prepared for the task at hand; we have every thing that we need to qualify. We don’t need to be anything more than ourselves in order to have success and that is a pretty special place to be.
This will be my third Olympic Qualifier and inevitably my last.
You might think that there is a ton of pressure on me (and my fellow older teammates) to get the job done now. And maybe there is deep down but I am really holding on to how special this group is and how much I have loved this entire recent experience. To be at the brink of something amazing that can change the course of an entire program is something so unique. And I just have all the feels right now looking around at the support systems we have and all the teammates around me.
I just can’t imagine anything being different.
We are SO ready to go win this tournament and solidify an Olympic berth for this summer in Tokyo.
We got sent some good luck cards from a Vancouver elementary school!
Downtown Athens on one (of two) of our off days.
Our team’s favourite coffee shop while we were training was called 10,000 faces.
Roomie: Dani Dammers (Smith)
The squad + our incredible crew of volunteer coaches! Would not have been as successful without you all.
To be honest it was hard to read that again because at that particular time we still hadn’t played. The dream was still in reach. Now, I am currently sitting at my favourite coffee shop wondering if all the words I have constantly thought this past week will come flooding back to me. Or will I fail to share with you everything I am feeling.
As mentioned above, training camp in Athens was as great as it could have been. We were all floored by the support of the volunteer coaches that were stepping into the gym for one day or for every single session. It was amazing having so many eyes be so detail-oriented as we tried to elevate any and every aspect of our game. Every single session we were all working on a couple of things that we wanted to nail down and perfect by the end of the day so that tomorrow could cultivate further tweaks in our skills. We knew that time was of the essence so our learning curves were incredible steep. We watched video of ourselves or of other players doing the skill well and had extra rep sessions in order to speed up the time of learning. Trevor Ragan from Train Ugly was in our gym for a few days and ran us through a couple of team sessions. Carli Lloyd, Team USA setter and Olympic bronze medalist skyped in to talk about her unorthodox “rise to the top” and preparation for Rio. We were at the gym for ten to twelve hours, eating lunch and dinner together every single day. I was beyond proud of my teammates on how hard everyone was willing to work and how focused we came in to each task.
We got uncomfortable, we got frustrated, we doubted, and we thrived. We played some incredible volleyball and by the time we were ready to leave Athens, the squad was itching to get on to the court and get the games going!
After a very early morning we were on the road! Dominican Republic of course had beautiful weather so we all had our faces pointed up towards the sun as we loaded our bags onto the bus. Luckily the gyms had air conditioning so we didn’t melt as much as I was expecting.
Our first game was against Puerto Rico and it was clear that both teams were fighting a lot of nerves (easy to see when each side is missing a ton of serves!) We were up in the fourth set about to close out the win when a challenge call didn’t go our way. We lost focus and PR closed the gap on our long lead and ended up winning the fourth set. And then the fifth.
To be up about to close the game and then lose was such a shock. And obviously not what we wanted to do in the opening game of this tournament. BUT we all had to rally eventually after the shock wore off as it wasn’t over yet; there was still a chance to win and qualify. Later that evening Mexico took Dominican Republic to five so everything was wide open once again.
Dominican Republic was our next game which we were anticipating to be the most challenging as they are a very strong, experienced team and were playing with the strength of their home crowd behind them. We had a poor start but great second set comeback, unfortunately not being able to sustain our play and ended up losing the next two. Just like that, it was over. Four years preparation came down to this moment and we couldn’t overtake the Dominican team that day, even though we had done it before. It took everything in my power to come together with my teammates in the middle of the court, cheer, shake our opponents hands, and then sign the score sheet. I didn’t know what to do with myself directly after the match. I had so many thoughts that it just kind of froze me in my tracks. Right when I started walking off the court is really when the emotions kicked in, the enormity of the situation coming crashing down on me. The weight of the world I was trying so hard to carry was suddenly too much. As a few of us straggled off the court, Ben Jo pulled me aside for a big embrace and whispered in my ear how proud he was of me. Cue sobbing. Like… ugly uncontrollable sobbing that wouldn’t back down. That feeling and that image will be what takes me back to this tournament; sheer exhaustion and heartbreak coming through to the surface.
Tom and I had to unfortunately go to the press conference which is done after every game. It was undoubtedly the hardest set of interviews I’ve ever had to do. Both captains and both coaches sit down in front of a LOT of journalists and ask a bunch of questions. Many of mine were directed at what exactly we were missing in our game to win the match and because I had just balled my eyes out to Ben, how my tears showed my heart and to explain how much this tournament meant to me. I listened to their captain explain how their preparation started four years ago with a lot of determination and hard work, and that she would be ending her long career after their trip to the Olympics. I tried not to lose it yet again so ended up sitting there chugging approximately three water bottles. It only half worked. As soon as we were excused and through the door the tears came flowing out of me. Their captain and I had played against each other my entire career. We hugged, said some words, and that was that. She brought her team to the Olympics and I did not. That was that, there were no second shots or re-dos. Fate was sealed and our teams’ paths would play out in different ways than I had dreamed of for so long.
The hardest part: we still had a game to play. Mexico has a couple of players that are playing in top professional clubs so it would not be an easy game. We knew we had to rally even though we wanted to stay under the covers for the next week. That evening we also watched our boys beat Cuba in five which was a bitter sweet feeling for us all. Salt in the healing wound. Pride and jealousy all moving together as one strong hybrid feeling. But I will go through more of that in part 2 of this post (which will be released in a few days).
Can you imagine just being denied your life’s dream and then having to turn around and do it all again the next day? It was harder than I could ever explain. I didn’t stop “misting” ie. crying until after that match. I went to bed with swollen eyes and a broken heart but a lot of love and respect for the squad. The next day we skipped our early morning serve and pass and instead had a team meeting right before video. Tom spoke some words but also opened up the floor for anyone who wanted to speak which was essentially majority of the girls going around in the circle, sharing their hearts, being vulnerable and broken. It was extremely emotional. Two hours later we were on the bus for our last match.
Even though we won in 3, I can’t really say that it was our greatest showing. First, I was playing (passing) libero as Jessie Nile’s back was in too much pain to play this third game in a row. I have never practiced being a libero, let alone flipping on and off with our defensive specialist Kristen Moncks, so that was an interesting learning experience for me. Eyes were still red and swollen all around me but we dug our heels in and did the best we could, eventually getting that W. To carry our team forward into the summer and into the prestigious VNL tournament (where the top 16 teams in the world travel around for five weeks in a row, playing each other on the weekend) it was very important to end our time together on a successful note. That was not an easy task after such a devastating last match. Our character proved to be much greater than our hurt.
Before the game against Dominican Republic in our pregame huddle in the locker room after prayer, I asked my teammates to jump in the arena with me so to speak. I told them that four years ago during our last Olympic Qualifiers I didn’t feel like we were all in and as prepared as we could have been. Hearing that some teammates didn’t believe we could qualify years later really upset me. So this time, I asked the girls to come all in with me. I asked everyone to go around in a circle and say out loud that we would be at the Tokyo Olympics this summer. They all jumped. Every single one. In that moment we were all in for the same dream and the same goal. It didn’t matter what had happened prior to this because we were all in for this moment.
I think that is why it hurt so badly. I asked the girls to be vulnerable and speak this particular goal out loud. At the end of the match when we lost, those words fell and came crashing down. But another thing I will always remember about this tournament is in that moment, this group of women was more connected than in any other time I have experienced.
I came home with disappointment but not with failure. I felt that our preparation was as good as it could have been. We had all of the skills we needed from coaches to players to support staff to win this tournament and qualify for the Tokyo Olympics but unfortunately it wasn’t our weekend. We just didn’t play well and we certainty didn’t play up to our normal standard. And unfortunately that happens. It hurts and it sucks but it happens. It’s why the Olympics are such a hard tournament to qualify for as there are only a certain number of berths out of each world zone. And although not all the best teams in the world are there like they are at World Championships, it is still viewed as the pinnacle of sports.
We could have. But we didn’t. It’s not like we weren’t skilled enough which does hurt more. I have a lot to share with how this past week has gone and all the thoughts and feelings I have after the fact but I will wait to share that with you in Part Two, coming out in a few days.
And remember to sign up for my email list here; I will be giving away TWO jerseys within the week.
Feel free to leave a comment. Cheers folks. X
