Heidi Peters might not be the Terminator, but said just like the popular movie character she and her teammates will ‘be back.’
The back she is referring to is the 2020 Paralympic Games, in Tokyo, as part of the Canadian Sitting Volleyball National Team.
“Being part of the National Womens’ Canadian Sitting Volleyball team has been a wonderful experience on its own, but to be able to compete for your country at the Paralympic Games in Rio was so amazing and humbling at the same time,” she said. “We are a young club and no one has retired, so I don’t know why we can’t come back in 2020.”
Peters, who is a Neerlandia native, became involved with the Canadian paralympic sitting volleyball contingent in 2013, after undergoing treatment for osteosaracoma, a bone cancer, which saw her left leg amputated. She was first diagnosed with it in September 2011.
It was during these cancer treatments that she met Jolan Wong, a player in the Canadian Women’s National Sitting Volleyball program. Like Peters, Wong lost her leg to osteosarcoma about seven years earlier.
It was Wong who first suggested that Peters try out for the national sitting volleyball club.
In May 2013, Peters, who played volleyball throughout her Barrhead Composite High School career, successfully tried out for the national team, where she has remained since.
Although Peters’ Paralympic journey really began last year, after the Canadian Sitting Volleyball contingent qualified for the Paralympic Games by winning a bronze medal at the Parapan Am Games in Toronto, she said it didn’t feel like a reality until she joined the rest of her teammates in York, ONT, for a three-day-preparation camp starting Aug. 27.
Besides practicing and strategizing for the games, Peters said part of the camp was devoted to preparing for what they would be facing in terms of travel, weather, living accommodations and everything else they would experience.
“I think it was really important for us to get together and make sure that everyone had the chance to touch the ball and get some good training in before we left.”
After the camp, Peters and her teammates joined the rest of the Canadian delegation at Toronto’s Pearson Airport.
“It was really cool. The gate where we were to depart was turned into one big lounge. There was food and snacks. Music was playing —it was just one big send off party,” Peters said, adding it was at this time she realized the magnitude of what she was doing. “It was like, ‘Wow, here I am, with all these people from different sports. This is bigger than us, this is real, we are doing this for our country.’”
After a 10-hour flight she arrived in Rio de Janeiro and despite all the problems the athletes heard about how many of Rio’s Olympic venues were not complete and how disorganized some of the events were, Peters was pleasantly surprised how smoothly everything went.
The Paralympic village where Peters and the majority of the Canadian teams stayed was located outside of the city. During the preparation camp the Canadian Paralympic Committee (CPC) said athletes should be prepared for a minimum three-hour ride regardless if they were going from the airport to the village, or from the village to any of the sporting venues.
However, Peters said the longest it ever took her or her teammates to get anywhere was an hour, with the majority of trips being in the 30-to-45 minute range.
The Canadian contingent was housed in a condominium style building they shared with athletes from New Zealand, Latvia, Slovenia, Croatia and Romania, but about half of the building was devoted to Canada.
“The CPC did a really great job. Everything was right there for us from a big lounge for all the athletes, a concierge and a dining room where we could get snacks to meeting rooms and even our own medical room,” she said.
Accommodations were similar to what one might find in a college dormitory. In each suite there was a large common area and off them were three bedrooms, each of which had its own bathroom.
Peters shared the space with three of her teammates, two people to a bedroom, along with two other Canadian athletes, an archer and a sailor. One of the group’s favourite features of the suite, besides the WiFi, was the balcony.
“It was really nice to be able to sit outside on a warm day,” she said, adding all the days were warm by Barrhead standards, averaging about 28 degrees Celsius for the duration of her stay. “But with the 80 per cent humidity it felt more like 30 to 31.”
As for the competition itself, Peters said the squad left Rio a bit disappointed with their seventh place finish. Before the games began they set a goal of finishing in fifth or sixth place, but after only one of their four games, it didn’t happen. Canada played Brazil, Ukraine, Netherlands and Rwanda and their win came in their final game against Rwanda.
“It’s always frustrating not to achieve your goal. After all, as athletes we play to win,” she said, adding, with they had one of the youngest lineups in the tournament they new it was an ambitious goal. “We also went into every game and practice with the mindset to learn as much as we could and that’s what we did and in our upcoming competitions we will be that much stronger for it.”
Peters is especially proud of how they played in their first two games, both losses against the Ukraine and the Netherlands.
“Those are the best two games that we, as a team and, I have ever played,” Peters said, adding they played especially well against the Ukraine. Canada lost in three sets 20 - 25, 19 - 25 and 16 - 25. “It was definitely our best game. We trusted each other and our offence and defence and each of us individually played with confidence. We walked out of that game not having won, but extremely proud of each other.”
When asked what her biggest highlight off the court was, Peters puts the opening ceremonies at the top.
“It was a real cool experience. The stadium holds about 75,000 people and it was just so crazy to walk into it in front of all those people and to know it is on TV and everyone at home is watching us,” she said.
Peters concluded by saying that although being part of the Paralympics and the Canadian Sitting Volleyball team was a wonderful experience what she is most proud about is being part of the Paralympic movement.
“Being a Paralympian is a really big honour,” she said, adding a lot of people call her an Olympian believing it is the same thing. “Really it’s not. A lot of people think the Paralympics, or parasport as disabled, or a lesser version of the sport, but the derivative of para is parallel and that’s what the Paralympics are — it is a different, but equal version of the Olympics.”
