{"id":20321,"date":"2020-11-30T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T17:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=20321"},"modified":"2020-12-01T09:15:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T17:15:58","slug":"chargers-mens-volleyball-coach-focuses-on-training-during-cancelled-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/11\/30\/chargers-mens-volleyball-coach-focuses-on-training-during-cancelled-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Chargers men\u2019s volleyball coach focuses on training during cancelled season"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, November 18, the Pacific Western Athletic Association (PACWEST), which the Camosun Chargers are members of, announced that it was cancelling the 2020\/2021 athletic season. The statement said the decision was made to \u201censure the health, safety and well-being of member institution\u2019s [sic] student-athletes, coaches, athletics programs, and their surrounding communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Chargers men\u2019s volleyball coach\u2014and former national team captain\u2014Charles Parkinson says he doesn\u2019t know what this will mean long-term for the Chargers, for the time being, he\u2019s focusing on diving even deeper into the training process, one that comes without the pressure of having to win games.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal is for us, at the end of this period\u2014these guys will have had probably around 180 hours of pure skill-based development,\u201d says Parkinson. \u201cAnd I mean, man, you can\u2019t get that anywhere. It\u2019s a gift. And we have to look at it through that lens. I think we have to believe this is an opportunity for us, it\u2019s not hardship.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Camosun Chargers men\u2019s volleyball head coach Charles Parkinson (centre) hard at work on the court (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Parkinson says that while it\u2019s unfortunate that the team can\u2019t compete this season, part of using this time to the Chargers\u2019 advantage is creating competitive, game-like situations so that the players don\u2019t lose their competitive edge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will try to provide those competitive experiences so guys stay sharp, and you don\u2019t get stale with, just, you know, too much training,\u201d he says. \u201cWe do a lot of team-based training right now so that we don\u2019t get stale, so that guys still get that competitive urge and they get a chance to compete against each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing anyone can do about the fact that student athletes are missing the opportunity to play against athletes from other institutions, so Parkinson says the team \u201chas to accept it and move on.\u201d But there is still work to be done: part of what Parkinson does is help make sure the student athletes remain academically eligible. (Players have to be full-time students and pass a total of 18 credits per academic year.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really important to me as a faculty member, but also as a parent with kids who have gone through this system. At the end of the day, volleyball\u2019s a moment in time, when you\u2019re looking at this from a life perspective, but your education is forever, and so, when you come to Camosun to play for me, I don\u2019t want you just to come and play volleyball. I want you to come and be a student-athlete and enjoy everything that\u2019s connected to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parkinson says he wasn\u2019t at all surprised when the season was cancelled, given that the schedule dictates that students have to travel to different regions of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019ve got an increasing rate of positive [COVID-19] tests, and the fact that we would have to travel to the Fraser Valley and to Vancouver\u2014which are two of the hot spots\u2014I think we always have to think of the safety of our student athletes first.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the athletes training on site at the Pacific Institute For Sport Excellence at Camosun\u2019s Interurban campus, extremely stringent protocols are being followed, says Parkinson, who mentions physical distancing, mandatory mask-wearing, and frequent disinfecting in buildings. Part of the issue is that it\u2019s relatively easy to control protocols in your own venue, but travelling to different venues would, in addition the risk of travel, mean that the players wouldn\u2019t be able to make certain that all protocols were being followed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be able to keep training,\u201d says Parkinson, \u201cso the only way to do that is to keep staying safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking down the road, Parkinson isn\u2019t sure how the turnover of players will impact the program. Current student athletes will not lose a season of eligibility, but next year, similar numbers of first-year students will want to come in and play; Parkinson says it\u2019s very difficult for a first-year student to compete with a third- or fourth-year student who has a couple of years of experience playing at the college level.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s important for coaches to be loyal to guys that have committed to them,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have anybody that\u2019s moving on, how do you accommodate new guys coming in? This is not [just] me, I think this is going to be a problem for all post-secondary programs as it relates to the current Grade 12s, because it\u2019s very rare you\u2019re going to get a Grade 12 athlete who\u2019s going to beat out a second- or third-year student athlete who has had that experience at the college level.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, November 18, the Pacific Western Athletic Association (PACWEST), which the Camosun Chargers are members of, announced that it was cancelling the 2020\/2021 athletic season. The statement said the decision was made to \u201censure the health, safety and well-being of member institution\u2019s [sic] student-athletes, coaches, athletics programs, and their surrounding communities.\u201d While Chargers men\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20333,"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":[238,8,9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-sports","category-sports","category-webexclusive","category-campus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321","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=20321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20322,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20321\/revisions\/20322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}