Canadian Sitting Volleyball Wins the First Battle of the Paralympics – the Fight for Coverage

When the Canadian women’s sitting volleyball team heard there were no plans to broadcast their preliminary matches at the 2020 Paralympics, Team Captain Danielle Ellis took her outrage to social media. It was only one week before the start of the games when the Canadian squad discovered that family and friends back home would have no way to watch as they began their quest for an Olympic medal. In her social media post Ellis put out a call to action, asking supporters to contact the Olympic Broadcasting Service and International Paralympic Committee and demand fair and equal coverage.

“The news was extremely hard to swallow, that many sports were not being included in the broadcasting by OBS, as the IPC had also released its new platform for #wethe15, touting inclusion and equality between all humans, as 15% of the population of the world is considered disabled. In Rio 2016, we had a similar issue, as Sitting Volleyball was also not included in the broadcast for preliminaries, announced just days before our games begun. We thought things would be better 5 years later,” says the sitting team’s captain.

Well, it seems that the call to action was answered, and now things are looking better than they did five years ago. On the eve of the Paralympics Opening Ceremony, The Canadian Paralympic Media Consortium confirmed they will be extending coverage to include all of Canada’s sitting volleyball games. It’s a huge relief for supporters wanting to watch the games live and cheer on Canada, but the situation goes to show the uphill battle athletes face to make the Paralympics a household name.

“There is still so much growth to come. Canadian broadcasters were able to say ‘Canadians won’t miss a moment of the Olympics’, but that’s not even half true for the Paralympics. As much as I can understand and appreciate a broadcast corporation wanting only the best broadcasts to be watched by its viewers, they aren’t allowing anyone to view so many Paralympic sports and that is not only devastating to the thousands of athletes that made it here to Tokyo, but to the friends, families, fans and also the millions of children out there with a disability that won’t have a chance to see their potential in an athlete ‘like them’.”

The need to increase visibility and exposure hits close to home for Ellis, who had her right leg amputated below the knee when she was just two months old, due to cancer. The White Rock, B.C native says she didn’t even learn about the Paralympics until she was 16 years old, despite being an amputee for all of her life. It wasn’t until someone approached Ellis at an able-bodied high school volleyball camp and told her they had seen the USA Women’s Sitting Volleyball team perform and then passed along contact information to her.

“How is it that a two-time Paralympian never knew her potential and her possibility for the first 16 years of her life?” asks Ellis. “The answer? An ableist society that still looks down on the Paralympics and adaptive sports as a whole. The Paralympics are the second largest International Competition there is, second only to the Olympics. So, how is it that people are still unaware of it? Society deserves to see all of these amazing athletes do what they are so good at.”

Ellis is being modest when she talks about being good. The Canadian women are a force – ranked fifth in the world. At the 2016 Rio Paralympics they finished in seventh, but five years later, the team has its sights set on the podium. It’s a huge deal for a program that just got its start in 2008. Eight members of the 2016 Paralympic team are back again competing in Tokyo, so it will be an experienced and cohesive squad that takes to the court.

“I think people underestimate us still, I think the world is really going to see what Canadian volleyball is about when we hit the court. We’re fast, we’re strong, we may not be tall, but we’re smart and we’re going to do everything we can to get the ball on the floor.”

The Canadian team will open the tournament with games against Brazil, Italy and hosts Japan. Ellis thinks that if Canadians tune in, there’s no doubt people will get hooked by the fast and exciting sitting volleyball action.

“I fell in love with indoor volleyball in high school and went to my first drop-in sitting volleyball session in 2007 and boy was it hard! Sitting volleyball uses a lot of similar strategies and tactics as indoor volleyball, but it’s so much faster and you have to move using your hands, making everything so much more difficult. As an indoor player, when the ball is coming to your left, you take a step left. In sitting, the ball is coming to your left, so you have to put your hands on the ground, lift your body weight and move it left and then bring your hands back up to play the ball.”

Volleyball fans tuning in to watch sitting volleyball for the first time will recognize similarities – such as rules of the game, infractions like “carrying” the ball, scoring to 25 with best of 5 sets, and the use of a libero. Major differences include a smaller court (5m x 5m on each side) with a 2m attack line, a shorter net and you can block a serve. You must have part of your torso or buttocks on the ground when you contact the ball, with the exception being the first contact in the backrow, where you can have brief loss of contact from the ground.

“I had a great time watching our volleyball teams compete in the Olympics, and that’s truly all we want as well. For people back home, and around the world to be able to watch us and learn and get excited for another sport in Canada!”

Canadians can catch all the action as the women go for gold. First match is versus Brazil on August 27 at 5:30 am ET. The broadcast will be available to watch live at Paralympic.ca/Tokyo-2020, cbc.ca/tokyo2020, and Radio-Canada.ca/jeux-paralympiques.