OLDS — A local businessman hopes this is the year his club volleyball and club basketball teams can have a full season after both were founded last year, but “sideswiped” by COVID-19 restrictions.
“It’s one of those ones where both of our club seasons were sideswiped by restrictions,” Chris Grudeski of APEX Athlete Development said during an interview.
The club is with Volleyball Alberta this year. The 14U girls team headed to a tournament Jan. 15 in Balzac.
"So everything – fingers crossed – looks normal for this year.”
He said the company, which has an 18,000-square foot facility along Imperial Way, also plans to re-start club basketball in April or so.
“Typically a club volleyball season is a January to mid-May-type season and of course, last year, we had a shutdown in there which kind of squashed the entire competition side of club volleyball,” he said.
“We did run a club volleyball program with training and kind of in-house stuff, but we had to extend that into summer, which obviously affected a lot of people who had committed.”
Now in its second season, the club volleyball program has a 16U team, two 15U teams, a 14U team and a 13U team.
All told, about 48 girls are registered in club volleyball, he said.
Many athletes in Olds and area gravitate to club teams in other communities such as Red Deer, but Grudeski thinks that’s because the volleyball and basketball club programs were only founded a year ago.
He's confident that over time, more and more youth will join his programs once they’re aware of them.
