Canada calls on Schoenherr
Waterloo volleyball star will participate in a virtual training camp with the national Under-19 team
WATERLOO — Volleyball Canada reached out with the invitation and Cory Schoenherr marked the dates on his calendar.
The Waterloo native, a sixfoot-seven middle blocker and occasional right-side hitter with the Kitchener Waterloo Predators Volleyball Club, has been awarded a roster spot for virtual training sessions with Canada’s Under-19 men’s team. The program, according to a news release, aims to further connect, educate and continue the development of select athletes as Canada looks ahead to world championship qualification in 2021.
Thirty players will take part in the U19 virtual camp and Schoenherr, a three-time Team Ontario selection, is one of 11 players to hail from this province and the only one from Waterloo Region.
The soon-to-be Grade 12 student at Bluevale Collegiate has mixed feelings about his initial foray into Team Canada territory.
“It’s obviously not what I was expecting for my first national team experience, but it’s pretty surreal to be up there with the top athletes in a country that is sending a team to the Olympics next year,” said the 17-year-old Schoenherr.
“Unfortunately, the (U19) team was supposed to be going to Colorado and then Honduras, but that’s not going to happen because of COVID. It might eventually happen, maybe they’ll push it back a year, I really don’t know.”
The virtual camp runs Monday through Friday of next week and participants will attend two sessions daily. After a weeklong break, the camp resumes July 27 for another week of two-a-day video gatherings.
The fact Schoenherr views the camp as a learning opportunity will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen him go about his business with the Predators.
He played on two teams for the club last season — U16 Ubuntu and U18 Chaos — and excelled with both while paying attention to details that could make him a better player.
“He is just an absolutely fabulous human being, teammate, competitor, leader, you name it. I can’t say enough good things about this kid,” said U18 Chaos coach Duncan Cairns.
“He keeps a notebook that he writes down all of the things that he’s trying to work on and accomplish. He’s very attentive to detail in terms of fixing minutiae when it comes to his arm swing or his approach angles. He asks everybody in the gym for advice and help, but he’s discerning enough to know who to listen to and who not to listen to.”
Schoenherr hasn’t been on a volleyball court since March when the pandemic hit and caused the cancellation of a trip to Poland as part of a Team Ontario Elite (17-18) team that had been selected in January.
Since then, he’s played a bit of beach volleyball while finding various ways to stay fit.
“It’s safe to say this is the longest I’ve gone without playing since I started to play volleyball (at age 14),” he said. “The national team is training again in Gatineau (Que.), but we’re still waiting in Ontario.”
Schoenherr has aspirations of playing volleyball at the university level in the fall of 2021 and down the road hopes to achieve the loftiest of goals by playing for Canada’s senior men’s team. Cairns is optimistic he’ll do both.
“He could throw a dart at a map of North America right now and he could go to any school he wants ... and he has the marks to do it, as well,” Cairns said. “He could be an international sensation for us.”
Schoenherr is a well-rounded athlete who has played many other sports during his time at Bluevale, including hockey, basketball, badminton and track and field in discus, shot put, javelin and long jump.
He won an Ontario Federation of School Athletics Association bronze medal in the discus in his Grade 9 year.
Mark Bryson is a Waterloo Region-based reporter focusing on sports for The Record. Reach him via email: mbryson@therecord.com