Joe McWilliams
I was talking to a guy at a Team Alberta volleyball selection camp the other day. We were watching the players go through tests of their foot speed and jumping. The vertical jump test particularly interested me, as I’d once held my high school record in the standing jump. I did it in Grade 11 Phys Ed, at North Peace Senior Secondary in Fort St. John.
Mr. Daniels was having the whole class do it, one after another. Wet your fingertips, jump and swipe a little blackboard type of thing at the peak of your leap. The gradations were marked on it.
“That’s 29 1/2 inches, McWilliams,” Daniels said to me.
“That’s a school record.”
Wow! I hadn’t been expecting that! It felt pretty good!
Now comes the part of the story that I usually tell, and have told to good effect off and on ever since. I told it again to the guy at the volleyball camp the other day.
“I once held the standing vertical jump record for my high school,” I said to him.
“For about 10 minutes!”
Sure enough, some superior leaper was behind me in the line, and he did 30 inches. Poof!
My reign as school record-holder was gone before I could even get used to it. I guess I could say it was fun while it lasted, though.
Years later, in my role as a newspaper reporter, I was invited up north by Fish & Wildlife. They were doing a test-netting project in the little river that connects Quitting and Vandersteen Lakes, which is near Peerless Lake. The Fisheries guy running the program was from over Peace River way. We got talking and I must have told him I’d gone to high school in Fort St. John.
“Oh!” he said. “My wife grew up there. Her maiden name is Syryda. Does that name sound familiar?”
“Any relation to Rod Syryda?” I asked, thinking of a certain athletic classmate of mine.
“My brother-in-law!” he said.
“Let me tell you what that guy did to me . . .”
And so on and so forth.
Records are made to be broken, though, and it didn’t bother me much. I’m glad it happened, in fact, because it makes for way better story than if my record had stood.
Chances are I’ll never run into Rod Syryda again, but if I do, you can bet I’ll bring it up!
So, getting back to that volleyball selection camp. There were some very impressive leaps, by some impressively tall 15- and 16-year-olds. The guy I was talking to was watching his 6’ 3” son out there, who he said he’s looking up to now. He also told me the expectation for elite jumpers that will make Team Alberta is a vertical jump somewhere above 30 inches. Apparentlya everybody is doing it these days
Why these kids were trying out in Slave Lake is because of its convenient location between the two big population centres of Northern Alberta – those of course being Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray. But kids from Edmonton were also participating. Why? Because there’s no similar camp held in the capital city!
Good for Volleyball Alberta for spreading it out like that. Putting Slave Lake and the region generally, I guess, on the map. I wonder what our visitors thought of the highways . . .Maybe our provincial government should start paying attention and do something about that!
Sorry, I’m rambling. One idea leads to another. If I keep going much longer I’ll probably get onto gas prices and the turfing of a certain northern Alberta MLA by the United Conservative government.
But that’s not what this is about!