New Partner, New Season, New Goals: 

First off sorry for being an awful blogger.  Yes it has been a year since my last blog (admitting is the first step).  Thankfully my roommate and great dude @maverickhatch (www.maverickhatch.com) has given me a swift kick in the butt to start updating my life, so here we go.  

So much has happened in the past year I wouldn’t even know where to begin! To sum it up shortly, I have switched partners for the Olympic push.  I had a fun time playing with Martin, and we had some solid results, but at the end of the day it was time for both of us to move on.  I am now playing with the high flyer Matt Zbyszewski.  He is a 2x National Champion with a snappy arm and is an absolute beast at the net.  Matty and I have been training together since January, and we have been steadily improving.  We are excited at our chances to earn an Olympic Birth.  Lately we have been on a roll, and we are ready to compete in the FIVB World Tour. Our first event will happen in Brazil next week, and we need to get some good results early on to have a chance at the Olympics. It’s time to clutch up and get some W’s.  Brasilia kicks off on the 16th with a country quota match against VanHuizen/May.  From there we head to Poland for another open event.  

I honestly do plan on updating this blog more regularly as the season gets going, so stay tuned! I’ll also keep my twitter updated: @chaimschalk

Lastly I have some new sponsors so special thanks to these companies for your support during our run!

Oakley http://ca.oakley.com - @oakley

Leftside Clothing: www.shopleftsideclothing.com

BioSteel Sport Drinks: www.biosteel.com - @BioSteelSports

SAXX Mens Underwear: www.saxxunderwear.com @saxxunderwear 

-Chaim

Continental Cup Champions!

The past few days we have competed in the Dominican Republic in a pre Olympic Qualification event.  The format of this event was as follows:  Each of the top countries representing the Central NORCECA region (North America, Central America, and the Caribbean) were to battle it out to see which countries would qualify for the Continental Final.  Countries involved in this event were, Canada, USA, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.  We needed to place top 4 to guarantee ourselves a birth in the Continental Final.   The winning country of the Continental Final (which will happen sometime in June of 2012) heads directly to the Olympic Games, while the teams who get 2^nd and 3^rd in that event will end up battling it out with the other Continents in which 2 more teams will be granted a birth to London in 2012. 

In these Country events, the style of play is similar to the Davis Cup.  Basically the top 2 teams in each country play off in a best of 5 series.  If need be the 5^th game is just one single “golden” set to 15.  This makes things very interesting and very intense.

In our first series we match up against a couple of talented teams from the U.S.  This was a huge round for us, as we needed to get by the Americans in order to make the winners semi.  Saxton/Redmann began with a win over USA#2, which gave our side the early momentum.  We then matched up with the top American team.  We played great and took them down in straight sets 21-16, 21-15.  Canada was up 2-0 in the series.  We recovered in our hotel room then prepared to sweep the series against USA#2.  Throughout this match we controlled the whole time, won the first set, and were leading in the second set when something unfortunate happened.  I sprinted for a ball and admittedly stepped under the net to keep the ball in play.  Unfortunately the blocker on the US team stepped on my ankle, which caused him to sprain his ankle quite badly.  They forfeited the second set and we took the series.  Ben and Christian ended up taking the last round as well. 

In our second round, we played Puerto Rico.  Got off to a quick start by taking out there #1 team again, this time in 3 sets.  We did however stumble in our second round losing to their #2 ranked team.  All was good though as Redmann/Saxton took care of business to seal that series 3-1 Canada. 

This got us into the finals where we matched up against an extremely high flying physical team from Cuba.  These guys were real talkers at the net and made sure to rub in every point they made in our faces.  We however kept our game to ourselves, did not engage their immaturity, and just played volleyball the way we know how.  Ben and Christian played well throughout the day, but couldn’t quite squeak out a victory over either Cuban team.  Every set they played went into extra points but the Cubans just got by them.  This meant that Marty and I had to win both of our matches in order to push the series into that golden set.  In our first match we ran into Cuba’s top team.  We had a good meeting the night before with head coach Lennard Krapp, and Assistant Ray Sewell.  We executed our game plan extremely well and were able to make big side outs when we needed to.  Martin had a great read on the block, and I was able to make some digs, which turned into transition kills.  They continued to push back but we stayed strong and won the match 24-22, 21-19.  With this momentum we had gained from our first match, we brought the same pressure and strong execution to another very good second team from Cuba.  We served them very tough and made tons of excellent plays throughout this match.  Martin was blocking extremely well, and my defense was right on track as we took this match 21-15, 21-18.  We had tied the series and gave our country a chance in the golden set!  Lennard picked us to play the golden set due to our previous success against the Cubans.  We took about 30 minutes between games to rest up and refuel for the biggest and most pressured game we have played in.  We felt very confident in our game and I had a great feeling inside that this was our day and nothing could stop us.  The Cubans changed their strategy and started serving Martin the ball.  Marty sided out like a champ and once again our defensive play helped us stay steady.  We went up 14-13 on a big side out, and then Martin went back and bombed an ace to take the win!  Canada wins gold and we are now the #1 seed headed into the Olympic Continental Final next year!  An Olympic birth just became that much more possible. Thanks to everyone for all the support we have received.  The staff out here has been incredible.  Alicia Crelinsten has been such a champ giving us therapy everyday here in the Dom Rep! Our coaches Lennard and Ray have also been huge in this victory.  Congrats to the women, they also did extremely well with their silver and have also guaranteed a spot in next years Continental Final. 

We now are playing one NORCECA event, which starts tomorrow at the same venue. (Yes that is only 1 day off between events) Then we will head to Vancouver for a few days followed by China for our first FIVB stop.  Videos and more photos to come!!

The FIVB World Tour is coming to Quebec as part of the Olympic Qualification process 

We are back home in Toronto now after a very enjoyable trip to the Cayman Islands.  We finished in 4th place, which was a little disappointing after playing such good ball leading up to the semis.  We lost 2 matches in the tournament, both games that could have gone either way in the tiebreaker.  We really wanted to be on top of the podium, however we made some good strides as a team.  Overall it was a very solid learning experience for us and we definitely showed that we are a great team, and will do great things this summer.  Here are some photo highlights of our trip! Special thanks to Carl for running such an incredible tourney, and also Duncan and Dipisha who graciously hosted us and got me into the “paleo diet” which kept me feeling great all week. Duncan’s paleo blog:  http://paleorod.blogspot.com/

Here is a view of the second court - as you can see we were pretty much playing in paradise. 

Martin and Andrew.  Andrew took us on a night time submarine dive!  He is the pilot of the sub.  He plays for team Cayman and trained with us in the week prior to the event. Sweet dude!

Here are some dolphins that we went swimming with, kissed, and boogie boarded while holding onto their fins.  They were so much fun! 

Special thanks to Brian and Mark who are Corona distributors for hooking us up with the Corona Hummer for the week! So fun ripping through the Caymans in this beast! We nicked named it the “cobrona” cause its a bro. 

An island that we visited.. 

Team Canada with Duncan on the far right.  Congrats to Josh and Rich on the big win! Also Heather and Liz for getting the bronze.  

The Continental Cup in the Dominican Republic is our next event! This event will be huge and we need to place in the top 4 to make it into the World Cup (which will decide who goes to the Olympic Games) 

Here is the schedule for our upcoming season! Olympic qualification years are crazy busy! 

Game vs Holland - first match of 2011! 

Photo by Cole Dziatkewich of The Savage Creations. Check out his group on facebook!

Here is a quick article that Martin and I were involved with out here in Aalsmeer, Holland.  We have had an amazing time so far and are looking forward to the tournament on the weekend!

More updates to come… 

Here is the video of our National Final win against Vanhuizen/Redmann - enjoy and thanks to everyone supporting us this year!! 

The past two weeks in Chennai were filled with many season highlights.  We went to India a full week before the event started so that we could adapt to the extreme humidity/heat, and get a taste of the area.  On top of that, the promoter wanted us to do a few things for the event in return for free living and accommodation.  The other team we adventured with was Jody Gooding and Tom Lord – the top team from Great Britain.  We became dangerously close with Tom and Jody.. Saying goodbye in the end was a little emotional as Jody likes to say.  

We ended up having a few meetings, training sessions, fittings and media work to do the first few days, so we kept quite busy.  The most important thing Martin (the promoter) wanted us to be involved with was the fashion show.  We got fitted nice and early to rock out with traditional India clothes down the runway.  It was such a blast – the locals definitely enjoyed seeing large white people wearing traditional clothing.  

Another highlight of the trip was visiting the Jeroham Orphanage, which was just outside of Chennai.  What ended up being an idea that Martin and I wanted to look into ended up raising quite a lot of interest from other teams.  I started to speak with a few different athletes we were training with about coming along.  We spoke with Suhin (the owner) about what the kids needed, and everyone ended up buying different fruits, candy, balls, and toys to bless the kids with.  Suhin has 25 children in his orphanage that he started in the late 90’s.  He was motivated to start an orphanage because of a little girl who was 10 years old selling heroine to help her mother pay the monthly rent.  It was a very sad story but was so inspiring to see what Suhin has done for his community.  We played with the kids that afternoon and shared some drinks and cake at the end as well.  It was a very rewarding day as 10 athletes came on the trip from Canada, England, and the USA. 

This brought us to the actual tournament for the next 5 days.  Yes we did come to play volleyball on this trip as well.  The tournament started pretty well for us. We beat the team from Holland in our first round, then later that night played a strong team from Iran and beat them 15-13 to advance in to the top 9.  The next day we faced a solid team from Turkey and ended up losing a nail biter 15-12 in the third.  We were disappointed, but later that night rebounded and took out the number 2 seed from Germany 21-18, 21-16.  This was our best match of the tournament and put us in a good position to make the top five.  The next day we played a different Iranian team in the heat of the day (38 degrees with 80% humidity) and we ran out of gas and made too many errors losing 21-17, 21-19.  It was a frustrating loss as we feel we were more than capable of medaling at this event but just weren’t able to get it done. Overall getting 7^th (out of over 50 teams) was still a solid result and it will put us into a better seeding position for the Olympic Qualification cycle starting next April!

Because the tournament was over for us, we decided to take a day and experience some more of Chennai.  Our photographer Lokesh and resourceful friend Uday took us out on a journey to see some temple ruins, do some shopping, and check out a ton of alligators.  I can’t explain enough how helpful and amazing Lokesh and Uday have been to us the past couple weeks.  We wouldn’t have had the experience we have had without them.  This day was definitely one of the top highlights of the trip – we really enjoyed a beautiful traditional meal, did some great shopping, and hung out with some alligators for a while.

Overall the trip to India was a huge summer highlight for me.  We got to experience the culture in Chennai, we met a ton of awesome people, hung out with little kids, and played some solid volleyball.  Definitely excited for them to host another event there next year. 

For now, Martin and I are headed back home for a bit – we decided to pull out of Puerto Vallarta due to a tweaked hamstring Martin has.  The off-season has officially begun….

Here is a Volleyball Canada article about our early results in India!