Practice made perfect for determined WinMan Winnipeg volleyball team tops field at U15 Youth Nationals in Edmonton By: Zoe Pierce Posted: 5:33 PM CDT Tuesday, May. 27, 2025 Last Modified: 9:30 AM CDT Wednesday, May. 28, 2025 Updates

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This article was published 27/05/2025 (306 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Led by head coach Leah Park, a Winnipeg team took it all at the U15 Volleyball Youth Nationals earlier this month in Edmonton.

The WinMan Wild 15U squad beat out 108 teams from across Canada to secure gold, defeating the Ontario Provincial Champions and the #1 seeded team, Pakmen Gold, to capture WinMan’s 13th Tier 1 National Championship on May 11.

“When you coach athletes that are so focused and want it so badly, it’s a ton of fun,” said Park.

Park, a high school phys ed teacher at Kildonan-East Collegiate, has been the head coach of the WinMan Wild for two years but brings over 20 years of experience coaching high school volleyball. She was inspired to coach WinMan by her older son, who began playing with the club, and now coaches her younger son, Lucas, who was on the roster this year.

Determinated, focused and hard-working were the words used to describe her team, which rose to the occasion for quite a successful year.

A few weeks earlier, the team also won the 2025 Volleyball Manitoba Provincial Championships and, throughout the year, competed in 16U and 17U tournaments to prepare for the best in Canada.

“When we wrote their names down on a piece of paper, we knew that they had a lot of talent,” said Park. “But for them to take that talent and show that we could be the best, was really great.”

The 14 team members practiced three times a week, along with an additional strength and conditioning session, as Park emphasized fundamentals throughout the season — with a focus on defence — also relying on star setter Xavier Laqui, who played a key role in winning nationals.

WinMan was pushed to three sets in both their quarterfinal and semifinal matches, but the squad used their round robin win over Pakmen as fuel, where they beat them two sets to one.

If they could do it once, they knew they could do it again, and that’s exactly what they did. Propelled by an electric crowd, the U15 boys took down the Pakmen in two straight sets, 25-18 and 25-21.

“I could tell that this group was absolutely locked in,” said Park. “Their focus was contagious. They looked at each other, and they were just building off that.”

“It felt like every fan in there was cheering for us, and the boys just played off that energy.”

It was a good weekend overall for the WinMan Volleyball Club. On the 14U side, the WinMan Bounce boys’ team also won gold that same weekend, going undefeated at the Volleyball Canada National Championships held at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg.

“Just so much pride, and learning those lifelong skills and to play with your teammates on a team sport, I think it’s still important, and they’ll have this memory forever and these friendships forever,” said Park.

zoe.pierce@freepress.mb.ca