Senior boys volleyball revived at Carbonear Collegiate

By Olivia Bradbury, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Last year, for the first time in over a decade, a senior boys volleyball team was formed at Carbonear Collegiate.
It’s thanks to Matthew Sheppard who began teaching at Carbonear Collegiate last year. According to his colleagues, it is the first senior boys’ volleyball team the school has had in 15 to 20 years. The team consists of 15 senior boys from Grades 10 to 12, as well as three Grade 9 training alternates.
The team recently hosted a fall invitational tournament, where they were joined by eight other volleyball teams. The home team Sentinels won their first ever gold medal and banner in tier two of the event.
“They started out as the team who had never won anything and have trained together and worked hard to get to where they are now,” said Sheppard.
The team hopes to go to the Volleyball Canada Nationals in May.
The Sentinels also hosted a new event this year: the Sentinel Snowball Classic tournament, which was held in support of men’s mental health. Sheppard was inspired to create the event after observing the players in the earlier days of the team’s formation.
“The boys would often get very down a lot because we were new to the sport and competing against tough teams,” said Sheppard. “I’d also hear them make comments about their own self worth a lot and I just knew this wasn’t the goal of the program. I designed the tournament because I have struggled myself with my own mental health.”
At the tournament, each team got to recognize as many players as possible with a Player of the Game for each match, and at the end of the tournament four mini banners were awarded to players on each team: Heart of the Team Award, Most Improved Player, Most Sportsmanlike Player, and Most Valuable Player.
“I didn’t do this from a ‘We are now in a society where everyone needs a medal’ perspective,” said Sheppard, “but more so to celebrate everyone’s unique achievements and to recognize that in sport a lot of factors come into play regarding achievements and victory. So let’s celebrate everyone’s hard work and let’s start a conversation about men’s mental health.”
The tournament also featured green t-shirts and accessories, and the teams dressed in green to represent the green ribbon of mental health. They partnered with the Splash Centre for the tournament and donated almost $1,000 to go towards mental health initiatives. Some of that money went back into Carbonear Collegiate where 20 male athletes got their mental health first aid training. Sheppard hopes that next year ASIST suicide prevention training can be offered.
“We, as teachers, hear all the time how severe things are getting for children’s mental health and I see so much about how young men are impacted and I know the reality of it myself all too well, so I decided that my athletic programming was absolutely going to be about the game and their skills, but also their development as young men and young people who sooner than we think are going to be out in the world as young adults,” said Sheppard.
The next Sentinel Snowball Classic tournament will be held in March. Sheppard hopes the event will be even bigger than last time.