Pischke reaches for Olympic dream

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This article was published 02/12/2014 (4151 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After winning the NORCECA (North, Central America and Caribbean  Volleyball Confederation) Championship Beach Volleyball title in Tobago with her partner Melissa Humana, Taylor Pischke may be well on her way to the Olympic podium.

The pair are now the top-ranked Canadian beach volleyball team in the Federation of International Volleyball, which puts them in the 15th spot in the world rankings going into the 2015 Olympic qualification year.

Pischke, who is a student at the University of Manitoba, where she plays on the Bisons women’s volleyball team, grew up in Silver Heights. She and her teammate didn’t have high expectations going into the tournament given that they’d been off the court for the past two months.

“We didn’t have that of high of expectations. We definitely didn’t expect to win at all because I’ve been at U of M for the last two months, so we really didn’t have much training outside prior to this event,” she said.

“So we kind of just wanted to progress throughout the tournament, and that’s kind of what we did as we got used to playing in the sand again, so we kind of peaked at the right time. That was our strategy, just to keep playing and get back in the groove a little bit.”

Pischke and Humana will need to be within the top 16 teams to qualify for the Olympics, so scoring the NORCECA championship puts the team in a better position going into their qualification year, Pischke said. She and her teammate were planning on working towards qualifying for the 2020 Olympic games, but coming off of a strong year on tour with Team Canada, the pair has decided to take a run at qualifying for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro.

“It’s huge, and even if it doesn’t work out, just going through the process of trying to qualify will definitely just give us an advantage in 2020 for sure,” she said.

At 21, Pischke is hitting her stride as a beach volleyball player at an earlier age than most of the players on Team Canada, who are between 27 to 30 years old.

“This year on the tour was a first for us, so every competition was a learning experience,” she said.

“We definitely don’t have as much experience as the older teams do, but I think it definitely gives us an advantage in that we have a lot more years left playing and we’re kind of at the same level playing as everyone else, so just getting a little bit more experience every year, I think will definitely be an advantage.”

Pischke will be moving to Toronto in January to train full time before heading into the 2015 season, which starts in March.

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