Vancouver Island Mountain Centre to receive first international team – Volleyball news
The Vancouver Island Mountain Centre in British Columbia, Canada is set to receive a girls’ high school volleyball team from Japan in the coming week.
This is the first time that an international team will visit the Vancouver Mountain Centre after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The Vancouver Island Mountain Sports Society (VIMSS) has confirmed that the Bandai senior high school volleyball team will come to visit Vancouver on March 23. The tour of Japanese team will last till 28 March. In the meantime, they will visit University
of British Columbia (UBC) and some other schools. The guest team will also play friendly matches against Canadian teams at the G.P. Vanier Secondary School.
The visit of Japanese volleyball team has been arranged by Masato Miyazawa, who is a former Mount Washington snowboard instructor. He worked at Mount Washington for three years (2005-2007) and then moved back to his home town in Japan. He started working
at Bandai senior high in Niigata. The visiting Japanese girls’ volleyball team belongs to the same school.
The team is mentored by Tetsuo (Terry) Watanabe, who has international experience in the sport of volleyball. He has been with the Bandai senior high school volleyball team for last nine years. During his tenure at Bandai School, he enabled the team to claim
six regional championship titles in their seven appearances.
Terry alongside Miyazawa visited Vancouver, last year. They had a meeting with Peter Gibson, the president of Mount Washington Alpine Resort.
“Before we visited the Island, I and Peter exchanged e-mails and I mentioned I was looking for school volleyball teams. He introduced me to his niece, who works at Vanier. Peter also took us to Vanier. We took many photos to show our students and their parents,”
Miyazawa said.
After visiting Vancouver, the two instructors arranged a parents’ meeting at the school and expressed their desire to take the students to Mount Washington. That’s how they finalised the plan to visit the Vancouver Island Mountain.
The six-day tour of Japanese team will surely help the student athletes to gain good experience as they will take on different Canadian teams. On the other hand, the Vancouver Island Mountain Sports Society (VIMSS) is also delighted to welcome an international
team after Olympics.
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