Former Red Deer College King volleyball player Chaim Schalk is feeling pretty good about things right now.
He recently got married, lives and trains for beach volleyball in Southern California and gets to work out against some of the best American beach volleyball tandems in the country.
Could it get any better? Yes it can. How About a trip this summer down to Rio and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games?
There is a better than average chance Schalk, along with long-time partner Ben Saxton will be part of the Canadian contingent heading south.
“To represent Canada in Rio would be a dream come true. It sounds kind of cliché but that’s what it would be,” he said. “Ever since I was a kid, watching the Olympics on t.v. and seeing the great things that have happened with our country, in the Olympics in general, it would be a dream come true.”
The pair have been putting together a very good year on the FIVB World Tour, beating the top teams in the world while taking home a medal in world competition, so their confidence level is high as Rio closes in. The final Olympic rankings come out June 13 but Schalk says on their current pace it appears a plane ticket to Brazil is there for the taking.
“We still need to finish hard and get a couple of good results.”
Schalk played at RDC in 2005 and 2006, winning a pair of national championships with those power house teams before heading to Trinity University. Two programs which have a long tradition of winning. The high level of indoor volleyball helped him develop that competitive streak which has served him well in the outdoor game in order to bring it to the court every day.
“Beach volleyball is two on two so you need to be ready to go all the time. If you’re not ready to go there’s nobody there to protect you or to sub you out or to hide you like there is in the indoor game.”
There are a lot of strong teams on the circuit these days so Schalk and Saxton have their work cut out for them.
“We are having really strong battles and a lot of times it can go either way and that goes for the top 20 teams in the world,” he said. “Sometimes it goes with who gets the right bounces that day or one guy gets hot but that’s just the way it goes. Everything is so close. That’s what makes it really exciting.”
Playing out the rest of the tournament season took some planning and strategy but Schalk says the main thing was to stay strong throughout the travel and the games.
“We feel that we play well when we’re playing a lot,” he said.
There are some big money events after the June 13 Olympic qualifying date they plan on playing and then take a break before the Olympics.
He says playing in Alberta you learned quickly how hard you needed to work in order to get where you wanted to go because everybody else was taking a similar approach. The payoff would be to wear Canada’s colours in South America.
“I don’t want to just make it and go through the process and just enjoy. Once we make it I want to be a threat to win a medal and not just to be, oh cool, you’re an Olympian. That’s been my mindset all along.”
Watch out Rio!
