Panther Powerhouses
Pat Farrell, one half of the tireless tandem of volleyball coaches at Regiopolis-Notre Dame in Kingston Ontario, laughs at the irony surrounding the dramatic rise of the sport at the country’s oldest English Catholic secondary school.
“When I started coaching here in 1991,we couldn’t even get practice time at our own gym,” he recalled. “We had to go to Ecole Cathedrale [elementary school], and if we did get practice time at Regi, it was at 7 in the morning.
“Yes, volleyball was the Rodney Dangerfield of games at the Russell Street schoolhouse. The roster – junior team only in those days – was filled with castoffs from the gridiron.
“We got whatever was left after the football team made its cuts,” Farrell said.Today, both junior and senior Panther teams are veritable powerhouses, known and respected in volleyball circles throughout the province.
Get the full story from Patrick Kennedy, The Kingston Whig Standard
