Kiera Van Ryk
SCHOOL: Surrey Christian FRESHMAN’S FUTURE: UBC
She has always been the girl with the goal of one day playing volleyball for her country’s senior national team.
And Surrey Christian’s Kiera Van Ryk — The Province’s girls high school volleyball Player of the Year — was set to travel the world to chase down that dream.
Now, it seems, the world is coming to her.
In January, Volleyball Canada relocated its Women’s National Training Centre from Winnipeg to the Richmond Olympic Oval.
So, with her bags remaining unpacked, the 6-2 Van Ryk is getting ready to embark on a best-ofboth-worlds chapter, one which she feels affords her the most unobstructed opportunity to blossom with a Maple Leaf across her heart.
“Going to the U.S. would have been awesome, but I just felt like Canada was the best place for me to learn and have an impact as early as I can,” said the star hitter who turned down overtures from Washington, Penn State and Nebraska to play at UBC for a Thunderbirds team that is coming off a gold-medal performance at the U Sports national tournament. Home sweet home, indeed. Last month, Van Ryk found herself as one of just three Canadian high school seniors invited to full tryouts with the senior national team at the Richmond oval.
And there, in the greatest train- ing environment her country affords, she could see her future self in the actions of the nation’s veteran players.
“It was eye-opening to see how much they wanted to get to know the younger athletes, to help them,” she says.
And like the vets at national team camp who made time for her, she will do the same herself as one of the veteran leaders on the Canada Summer Games team that plays in Winnipeg this August.
“I get to be that person who will be looked upon by my younger teammates for strength and for experience,” says Van Ryk. “It’s going to be uplifting to see them looking to the older players as we go to compete.”
Van Ryk will undoubtedly see the world over the course of her international volleyball career, but it looks like she’ll be able to say that she learned the greatest lessons of her life at home.