They maybe short on sand and sun but Yukon beach volleyball athletes aren’t light on mentorship with help from Olympic-calibre athletes who recently visited Whitehorse to work with the team.
Working with the Yukon beach volleyball players on Jan. 3 and 4 were Sam Schachter and Brandie Wilkerson who have both represented Canada at the Olympics and in other international competition. Wilkerson and partner Melissa Humaña-Paredes won a silver medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
“Canada is one of the strongest beach volleyball countries in the world, and I think there's so much talent here across the nation. So it's just really exciting to be able to meet a lot of these upcoming future Olympians,” Wilkerson said.
Schachter said he sees the importance of connecting with the Yukon’s volleyball community and spreading the game to different parts of Canada to foster excitement, especially about beach volleyball.
Asked about training for beach volleyball in a place that doesn’t have access to the outdoor sand courts that the game is played on for much of the year Schachter said there are lots of transferable skills that can be developed indoors and then taken out onto the sand on the warmer months.
“I think anything's possible, as far as, like, if you're motivated and you have the right situation set up, which it looks like the beautiful facility here,” he said gesturing to the interior of the Canada Games Centre where the training in Whitehorse was being held on Jan. 3.
“You can always get creative. I mean, beach volleyball is a very creative sport. It asks for a lot of individual thinkers and people who are self motivated. So those skills kind of translate in how you train and how you find ways to gain more skill, and then maybe eventually, you know, spend training camps in warm places, and even if it's a week a year, just to get a feel for it, it's just growing little by little until you get to the place where you want to be,” Wilkerson added.
Wilkerson advised high intensity interval training and time in hot environments like saunas for the cold-climate beach-volleyball athletes.
Schachter said he was impressed by what he saw on Jan. 3.
“The talent level is good. They have a clear understanding of how the skills are supposed to be performed. And most importantly, they seem excited and energized to be training, and very responsive to you know our recommendations and coaching, which, as coaches, is very exciting, and as Canadians, it's it's wonderful to see you know that there's prospects in all over Canada,” he said.
Shannon Poelman, who helped organize the training session with the Olympians for the Yukon beach volleyball players said driving the energy and excitement Schachter referred to is the goal. Athletes from Whitehorse, Faro and Teslin were present, Poelman said.
She noted exponential growth for beach volleyball in the Yukon and that she couldn’t take all the athletes he wanted to for last summer’s Canada Summer Games.
Poelman noted the benefits of getting the Yukon athletes on the court with high-performance athletes like Schachter and Wilkerson. She said that Wilkerson has been to the Yukon for a similar session once before and the local athletes have benefited from time with other high-end coaches and mentors as well in recent years.
She explained that there is more elite coaching coming up on Yukon beach volleyball’s calendar and that 16 or 17 local athletes as well as some coaches have a trip scheduled in the near future to Hermosa Beach, California which she called the birthplace of beach volleyball.
Poelman said grant funding via Lotteries Yukon has been a huge help to the YXY Beach Volleyball Club program.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this article stated that Brandie Wilkerson and Melissa Humaña-Paredes won a gold medal at the 2024 Olympics. In fact it was a silver medal
Contact Jim Elliot at jim.elliot@yukon-news.com
