Lire ce rubrique en français ici.
By Ottawa Sports Pages, for Paul-Desmarais Patriotes
While playing volleyball throughout her high school years, Julia Rossignol was admired for being a positive, supportive, hard-working and fun-loving teammate. Those traits all made her a strong leader, but there was one thing about her that made her club volleyball teammates tremendously envious of the recent École secondaire catholique Paul-Desmarais grad.
“I had a lot of friends on my club team, when they found out that I had a sports-study volleyball period at school, they were super jealous,” explains Rossignol, who was part of an Ottawa Fusion team that finished in the top third out of nearly 200 teams at this year’s 18U nationals in Calgary. “Sport-études is a lot of fun, and it really helped me a lot.”
Rossignol participated in the specialized volleyball program at Paul-Desmarais while captaining her Patriotes team at the French Catholic school in Stittsville. She found it was very beneficial to get extra repetitions during her school day on top of her practice time with her club team. A middle for the Fusion, Rossignol got to improve her passing and hitting more with lining up as a left-side for the Patriotes. And she became stronger all-around thanks to the physical training and the top-notch coaching she received in the program.
After following her volleyball-playing sister and parents into the sport back in Grade 7, Rossignol now plans to carry on that tradition by joining the volleyball team at Bishop’s University, where she’ll begin her studies in behavioural psychology this fall.
Rossignol’s journey is the kind of outcome that makes Cédric Bourgon smile. There have been many more similar stories in the six years the Paul-Desmarais sports-study coordinator has been at the helm of the volleyball program, including one player who’d never played club volleyball but nevertheless made it onto a U Sports varsity team.
At $150/year, the volleyball program offers exceptional value for the 70-or-so student-athletes who participate each school year, notes Bourgon, whether they are club players who want to take their game to the next level, athletes from other sports looking for a different opportunity at school, or sports-loving students who want to enjoy volleyball as part of their high school experience.
“It’s a really nice way to reach your maximum potential during your school hours,” underlines Bourgon, noting that sports-study students receive physical education credits as part of the program. “It’s like a phys ed course, but more specialized.”
A big part of what elevates the Paul-Desmarais program is the school’s partnership with the Ottawa Fusion Volleyball Club. The Fusion’s home base is at Paul-Desmarais – which gives the school access to high-quality training equipment such as serving machines, jump boxes, team seats and a weightroom full of volleyball-specific items – and the club’s coaches will visit on occasion to lead sessions.
Students split their time between practice in the gym, working out and classroom periods, where they’ll learn strategic systems of play and rotations, the role of each position, analyze statistics and video to formulate game plans, and study health and nutrition. They’ll sometimes practice complimentary sports to build all-around movement skills, such as badminton, soccer or ultimate Frisbee.
“It’s the best thing to develop a complete athlete,” says Bourgon. “It’s scientifically proven. If you look at long-term athlete development, you should be building your skills in a bit of everything.”
It’s the wide range of abilities required in volleyball that lit Bourgon’s fire for the sport. A hockey and volleyball player growing up in Eastern Ontario, Bourgon first caught the coaching bug when he was in Grade 12 and directed his school’s junior girls’ team in Plantagenet.
The University of Ottawa grad from St-Isidore went on to coach 16U and 18U national high-performance teams as well as developmental and summer camps programs with the Maverick Volleyball Club. Bourgon is an NCCP-certified development coach and he attends the annual coaching symposium held alongside Volleyball Nations League matches in Ottawa, where he brings his students to watch the world’s best players in action.
He also coached the Collège La Cité Coyotes before settling in at Paul-Desmarais, where he teaches volleyball program classes during the day and coaches the Patriotes girls’ and boys’ interscholastic teams after school.
“I love how volleyball is this really beautiful combination of all kinds of different skills,” highlights Bourgon. “You have to be agile, you have to be explosive, you need persistence and endurance. It’s a very physical sport and it’s also very mental. There are so many things going on at the same time, and it’s really fun to use a little bit of all those aspects to become a good player.”
Even more than the excitement of those challenges, what fuels Bourgon’s passion for volleyball the most is seeing players like Rossignol build friendships and feelings of belonging while growing up in the sport.
“We work with the students from Grade 9 to Grade 12, and you develop really nice relationships with them,” he indicates. “We all work together to improve as players and as a team. It’s really beautiful to see the special kind of chemistry that develops.”
Join the team! Learn more about the École secondaire catholique Paul-Desmarais sports-study volleyball program here as well as other concentrations offered at the CÉCCE school here.
