![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Charger-Presidents-Cup-for-web.jpg\")
<\/a>One person who wasn\u2019t hugely surprised was Chargers men\u2019s volleyball coach Charles Parkinson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was super happy for Graham, because he is the perfect example of what\u2019s possible with hard work,\u201d says Parkinson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Basi, a second-year Business Administration student, was on the dean\u2019s honour roll in the first year of his studies and won a Pacific Western Athletic Association Academic Excellence award for his academic achievements in 2018 and 2019. Basi says his ability to be successful in both athletics and academics comes down to strategic planning and finding a good balance between courses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSchool\u2019s always been something that I\u2019ve been pretty good at, so that makes it a little bit easier,\u201d Basi admits, \u201cbut honestly, I think it\u2019s more about setting yourself up for success\u2014that\u2019s planning your courses, making sure you\u2019re taking courses that you can work hard at and be successful at.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parkinson echoes that mentality, saying that the Chargers try to recruit players who are not just good athletes but also bright and intelligent students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you want to play sports at a post-secondary level, you have to maintain both your athletic and your academic eligibility,\u201d Parkinson explains, \u201cso it becomes pretty important that we try and recruit kids that have a really good balance between the two.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That ability to balance is necessary for Basi, who, on the average day last semester, was juggling two two-hour classes, followed by two hours of volleyball, another hour or two of training in the gym, and homework and assignments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt gets pretty busy sometimes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Basi, who started playing volleyball at the beginning of high school, got into the sport to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy dad played a lot when he was younger,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when he began this journey, Basi had no idea he would one day be playing at a college level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTowards my Grade 12 year I wanted to, but I never really got the call to say, \u2018Hey, come play for Camosun\u2019,\u201d Basi says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, thanks to open try-outs, Basi joined the team in the 2017-2018 season as a red shirt, meaning he could practice and work out with the team, but he didn\u2019t play competitively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI told him you need a season to kind of see how far you can go,\u201d says Parkinson. \u201cAnd he just worked his tail off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parkinson says that during that first season, Basi took every opportunity and advantage presented to him to better himself as a player. Basi became an active member of the volleyball team for the 2018-2019 season, where he continued to shine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis year he was a key performer for us on the roster,\u201d says Parkinson. \u201cHe came in in the semi-finals of the provincial championships and did a masterful job, and was the reason we made it to the finals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Camosun student Graham Basi has won the Camosun College President\u2019s Cup award. The award is among the most prestigious a Camosun athlete can receive; it\u2019s earned by a student athlete through a combination of excellence in athletics and academics, and it\u2019s presented at the annual Athletic Awards Ceremony. At this year\u2019s ceremony, held on April […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,232],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-june-12-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17764,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762\/revisions\/17764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}