Brooke Unger dabbled in a bit beach volleyball this summer but she admits she hasn't played a game she loves all that often this summer.
She's making up for lost time this week, along with 167 other grade school-aged players, who are getting their digs in at the WolfPack Volleyball Camp at the Charles Jago Northern Sport Centre and College of New Caledonia gyms.
The timing of the four-day camp is perfect for the 15-year-old Unger, who is just about to begin her second season playing as a power hitter for the Duchess Park Condors junior A girls team. She's been sharing the floor for 2 1/2 hours every day with one of her Condor teammates, Hallie Drezet, a setter for the 16-and-under provincial team as well as five of Unger's provincial bronze-medalist Prince George Youth Volleyball Club (PGYVC) teammates are also part of the camp.
"This is my first WolfPack camp and it's just fun, the guys are nice," said Unger.
"I'll definitely come back to this next year. It gets me in shape for tryouts and they know what they're doing when they teach you."
With 69 girls registered, the junior girls age bracket is the most popular at the WolfPack camp, which wraps up today.
This is the sixth year the Kamloops university team has conducted a Prince George camp. One of the feature coaches at the camp is Colin Carson, a Duchess Park graduate heading into his fifth season in the CIS as the starting setter for the WolfPack. Carson, 22, a business major at TRU, has been a fixture coaching at the Prince George camp every year since it started.
"I work sport camps in Kamloops all summer and it's unbelievable to see how popular volleyball is in Prince George," said Carson. "A similar camp coming up soon in Kamloops has 40 kids, whereas this one has 160.
"Obviously the coaching is quite good in Prince George and Dan [Drezet] has done an awesome job running PGYVC. I give him a ton of credit for how popular it is and the level of the athletes. There have been some quite successful club teams from here and that's awesome to see."
n Carson likes his WolfPack team's chances of success this season in the Canada West Conference.
"One of our guys [rightside hitter] Brad Gunter is in Turkey right now playing for the junior national team and we have two other fifth-year guys, Spencer Reed from Prince George [who plays Libero] and our middle blocker [Jacob Tricarico], so we should have a solid team," said Carson.
" We have good rookies coming in and the core of our team has been together for a few years now. I think if we get the pieces together at the right time, winning nationals is quite realistic for us."
