Volleyball gets new home at Northlands
Sport has outgrown its namesake venues, Canada’s world champions acknowledge
Where’s the beach?
In Edmonton, there’s Accidental Beach, the tiny one that suddenly appeared out of nowhere on the North Saskatchewan River. But it’s not exactly Copacabana or Ipanema Beach in Brazil and, besides, it doesn’t exist at this exact moment with the current high water levels.
The other beach in town is the man-made strip on the lake in Hawrelak Park created for the swim portion of the annual ITU World Triathlon Series event that also runs next week.
You’d figure Edmonton would be a highly unlikely location for the only FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour event in either Canada or the U.S. this year — and the only one in Canada since 2011.
But a beach has suddenly appeared at the Northlands Park racetrack where — every year at this time for 118 consecutive years at the Edmonton Exhibition and K-days on the property — the thoroughbred horses ran.
This year, the fillies favoured to win at Northlands Park will be Canada’s Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-paredes.
Our freshly crowned world champions have experienced some remarkable venues before, but never competed at a horse racetrack before.
Pavan and Humana-paredes say beach volleyball has, with rare exceptions, outgrown the beach.
“We get the opportunity to play in some really amazing locations and the majority of them are far away from any real beach,” Pavan said.
“I played on the water in The Hague,” Humana-paredes said of a floating stadium created on the Hofvijiver pond in the very centre of the city.
“I played in the sunken Roman tennis stadium in Rome, a venue created in an old steel factory in Ostrava in the Czech Republic, a venue in the middle of the Swiss Alps and a venue that was set up along the cruise ship docking harbour in Stavenger, Norway,” Pavan added.
It’s a sight to behold.
Or, actually, it’s a site to behold. What John May, Ron Pauk and their team have done, for starters, is basically build six giant sandboxes.
Two practice courts have been constructed on the infield of the racetrack. Three competition courts, separated by hay bales, line the home stretch virtually from rail to rail for the length of a football field.
The location of centre court is where you’d least expect to find it. It’s in the paddock area at the east end of the Northlands Park grandstand complex.
A full beach volleyball court barely fits in the enclosure, but a 700- to 800-seat grandstand will be built on the track itself to form the north side, and another will be on the east side.
An open hospitality area already is in place on the west side, where bettors used to watch the proceedings of the horses being saddled, the jockeys climbing aboard and the horses walked until being led to the track for the parade introductions.
But it’s the south of the enclosure that will become the signature of the design. The dozen numbered stalls where the horses were saddled are being transformed into sponsors and VIP hosting suites.
The actual indoor racetrack plant has been boarded up and will remain that way. Fans will come in from the K-days stage area of the midway and watch the action on the competition courts on the track like they’d watch the races as if they were railbirds. There will be picnic tables, benches and chairs, barbecue, beverages, concession stands and entertainment. Beach volleyball always has provided a party atmosphere and that will be the intention here.
There’s a lot to be done between now and practice day Tuesday. There’s the construction of temporary grandstand seating, the hospitality areas to be created, fit-out draping and decorating to be done, signage to be installed, athlete benches and officials judging stands to be built, and TV camera positions to be constructed.
They’re hoping to use the hay bales and saddle options for athletes to sit on to go with the racetrack theme.
“The greatest challenge has been to bring the beach to Edmonton,” said Puak, former manager of programing of the CNE in Toronto for 20 years who is directing the venue build.
“We’ve definitely done something very different here. And we’d definitely like to do it again and perfect it next year.”
First of all, they hauled in
2,000 tons of sand.
That’s a lot of sand.
“Federation International Volleyball has a consultant that helps promoters around the world get the right quality of sand and we were able to locally source our sand,” said May of the FIVB specific requirements.
If you’ve ever been to Brewer’s Beach at Gull Lake, that’s basically the brand of sand required.
“We had 1,600 truckloads of the stuff,” said Puak.
The transformation of the racetrack into a beach, especially if summer actually arrives for K-days, may even be a bigger draw than the beach volleyball players from around the world themselves.
Well, other than two new headliners.