OVA News

Queen’s Gaels Men’s Volleyball head coach Brenda Willis was named 2009-10 Fox 40 Ontario University Athletics (OUA) coach of the year.
Five-time OUA coach of the year and OUA 3M coaching award winner, Willis completed her 23rd campaign with the Gaels and her 36th year of coaching. Her career coaching record at Queen’s is 247-93 in [...]

The University of Toronto has a strong history of winning in the OUA for Men’s and Women’s Volleyball. Strong athletes attend U of T every year, which makes it no surprise that they are also producing some of the top Beach players in Canada. Some top players from U of T have represented Canada Internationally [...]

In John Child’s PROfile he mentioned “I’m a big believer in you won’t do anything well if you don’t enjoy doing it.” When you watch Kara Zakrewski play, coach or as a inspirational speaker it’s clear to see that a lot of her success comes from the enjoyment and passion she has for beach volleyball.
Kara [...]

When people look back at Eric Simon’s impact on volleyball during the 2009-2010 season there will be some obvious accomplishments that pop out. Eric was a huge part of The University of Western Ontario Mustang’s success. He was recognized for his individual success when he was named a CIS Academic All-Canadian, this season’s OUA Player [...]

In volleyball, there are many of paths you can take to achieve success. That’s what makes being involved with volleyball so much fun, there is no magic formula that says if you follow these five steps you will experience success. However there is one path that works more often than not, surrounding yourself with good [...]

The best thing about PROfiles is hearing about all of the different people that help make this sport and community so special. It is always interesting to hear how people started playing, how they reached their accomplishments, and the passion they have for the sport.
Featuring David Cousins was an obvious choice. He has been playing [...]

The Jason Senechal Memorial Award is presented to the Youth Beach Athlete that best demonstrates the qualities of honour, fair play, and sportsmanship. What makes this award even more special is it is voted on by your peers of the beach tour. Athletes such as Lance Reynolds, Eric Kuld, Sam Schachter  and Katie Jenkins have [...]

Sports fans love to debate who is the best player of a particular sport. Hockey’s Gretzky, Crosby or Ovechkin? Football’s Montana, Manning or Brady? And basketball’s Jordan, Bryant or James? are all timeless arguments. In volleyball the debate gets even more interesting when you consider two of the best players of all time were teammates [...]

Beach Volleyball is a rather unique sport whereby coaches cannot coach or be directly involved in the competitions. Therefore coaches need to prepare their athletes even more to be independent, mentally tough and possess the ability to problem solve themselves during matches. As a result, coaches sometimes do not receive or even expect recognition for [...]

It might be fair to say that if you asked the top men and women players in Canada who their favourite players were growing up, the answer would be John Child and Mark Heese. Their team alone raised the profile and popularity of Beach Volleyball in Canada with their bronze at the Atlanta Olympic Games [...]