Local Team Canada volleyball player Kyla Richey is going to the Pan American Games in Toronto this year, and she is “so, so excited.”
Richey was back on the Coast recently after Team Canada finished their exhibition matches in Calgary against Puerto Rico. The players met fans and signed autographs after the games.
“We don’t really get an opportunity to do that because we don’t have many tournaments or games hosted in Canada,” Richey said. “So actually having this huge, multi-sport tournament in Toronto – I’m so excited.”
The Pan Am Games are the second biggest multi-sport event after the Olympics, and also occur every four years.
After a little time off on the Coast, Richey is heading to Cuba for the World Cup qualifiers where Team Canada will compete against three other teams for one of two top spots that will get them into the World Cup in Japan this August.
After Cuba, Richey heads straight to Peru to play in the Pan Am Cup. Then the team has a week off before they go to Grand Prix, where teams play in pools each week. The following week is a different pool in a different country.
It’s two weeks of that before they’re back in Canada for the Pan Am Games.
“This is the busiest summer I’ve ever been a part of,” Richey said. “All of June and July, we have only one week where we’re not in competition.”
In the off-season, the Team Canada players go to Europe to continue playing professionally.
“We have to go to Europe to play professionally,” Richey said. “Because there’s not a professional league in the States or in Canada, all of us who are wanting to pursue volleyball and be on the national team, we have to go into the fall – like basically a school year – overseas.”
In the past year, Richey played for Italy but switched to Germany because the Italian team was having financial problems and couldn’t pay the players. The year before that she was in Turkey, and before that Germany.
Richey’s agent is currently negotiating her contract for this fall, but Richey said she hasn’t heard yet which country she will be playing for.
“Our coach has done a good job the last couple of years,” Richey said. “He’s kept the same core group together, so it’s not weird, we’re not skipping any steps after we’ve all been on various teams around the globe through the fall. We can all come back and gel really quickly and go from where we left off last year – which makes a huge difference with morale. Volleyball is such team sport.”
The Pan Am Games run from July 7 to 26 in Toronto.
