Canada’s sitting volleyball ‘nobodies’ ready to take on world

By Gary Kingston, Vancouver Sun June 28,

Kamloops native Greg Stewart gets his hand on ball during practice for the world sitting volleyball championships next month in Edmund, Okla. Stewart is the only B.C. member of Canada's team. At seven-foot-two, with a deep baritone voice, Greg Stewart is a presence just about anywhere he goes.

But on this day, in a gym in Surrey, B.C., he stands out — figuratively and certainly literally as he lumbers after wayward volleyballs — in a gigantic way.

Prosthetic limbs and athletic bags are strewn around the perimeter of the gym. Young men and women, most missing all or part of a leg, are sliding across the floor on their behinds, stretching for a dig or setting up a teammate for a spike of the ball over a low-slung net.

The game is sitting volleyball, an official Paralympic sport since 2004. And when Stewart, who qualifies as a result of being born with only half a left arm, folds himself like a giraffe down to the floor, he becomes Canada’s most intimidating weapon.

“If I see fear in somebody’s eyes, I’m going to go right at them,” he says, a sly grin crossing his face at the thought of pulverizing the ball at a defenceless opponent sitting just a metre or two away.

“It goes back to his angle, the angle of attack,” says head coach Ian Halliday. “There’s not too many people out there that have a torso and a hand reach that long. And it’s not like (able-bodied) volleyball where a shorter guy can be evened out by a big jump.”

The country’s men’s and women’s teams were at Surrey last weekend for a final camp before the 2010 world championships in Edmund, Okla., July 10-19. It is the first worlds for both as Canada was slower to switch focus when standing volleyball for athletes with a disability was dropped after the 2000 Paralympics — the Canadian men won silver — and replaced by the sitting game.

A three-time world champion in standing volleyball, Canada did not qualify a team of either gender at Athens in 2004 or Beijing in 2008.

Stewart, a native of Kamloops, B.C., is actually a two-sport star. In able-bodied basketball, he was the CIS Canada West defensive player of the year last season as a prosthetic arm-wearing junior centre for Thompson Rivers University. He hopes to play professionally overseas after school.

Sitting volleyball, he says, is a “fun” diversion.

Stewart, the lone B.C. athlete on the nine-member team headed to Oklahoma, began playing with the standing volleyball team in 2002 “and it gave me the opportunity to travel around the world.”

The International Paralympic Committee replaced the standing game with sitting volleyball because it felt the latter discipline was a better representative of what athletes with a disability can do. Rules are very similar to the able-bodied game, except that the court is more badminton-sized at 10 metres by six metres with a net that is 1.15 metres high for men and 1.05 metres for women.

It makes for an extremely quick, tactical game in which speed, control and reaction time are essential.

Front row players are also allowed to block the service of an opponent. The six athletes per side must keep at least one butt cheek or hip in contact with the floor at all times.

Stewart’s biggest challenge is quick movement of his bulk. With a prosthetic arm and hand on his left side, he simply doesn’t have the power that the two-armed, single-leg amputees have to propel their bodies.

“And it’s tiring for my upper body. Having the one arm, it’s tough to screw yourself around kind of using one and a half.”

He’s broken two prosthetic hands already.

“Just from moving the weight of myself on the floor. The last one looked like somebody bit if off. It was kind of weird looking.”

But his length, particularly when spiking balls down, is terrifying to opponents.

“We practise a lot with Team USA and last time we played them, their coach sat in a chair (in warm-up) and hit the ball at them,” said Stewart. “He’s hitting from four feet above the net, trying to do what I’ve been doing so they can learn to block me. There’s definitely an intimidation factor.

“But (we’ve learned) China has a big guy, similar size to me. Maybe I’ll be the intimidated guy on the other side.”

Canada is in a pool with China, the U.S., Libya and reigning Paralympic champions Bosnia-Herzegovina at Oklahoma. There are 23 countries represented in the men’s competition and only the top three will qualify for London 2012.

“We have a tough pool, with Bosnia being the top team in the world,” says Stewart. “But let’s give them a run for their money. Let’s be the nobodies walking in and becoming somebody.”

AT THE NET: There are three players from B.C. on the women’s team, Tanja Hodzic of Vancouver and Danielle Ellis and Jordan Funnel, both of White Rock.

gkingston@vancouversun.com

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