Beaverlodge product coaching Team Canada at international volleyball tournament

Jun 25, 2025 | 3:09 PM

Beaverlodge product Gina Schmidt is coaching Canada’s team at the NORCECA U19 Girls Pan American Cup volleyball tournament in Kingston, Ontario.

This is a warm-up tournament for the U19 World Championship to be played in July in Croatia and Serbia.

Schmidt says in a news release from Volleyball Canada says, “we’re excited to see what we are capable of as a team.”

“We are using this to see how we can best prepare for what’s next, so there will be a lot of learning. We are familiar with some of the teams from last summer and we’re looking forward to a strong showing in front of a home crowd.”

Canada opened with a 3-0 win over Costa Rica Tuesday night (pictured). Schmidt called this “a good win in front of our home crowd.”

“I think something we’ll talk about for (Wednesday) is about how we can reduce the amount of unforced errors on our side, but for a first game we got a lot of players into the game, so that was important.”

“We got to try different people getting used to playing beside each other, so this was a great first game to get those first-game jitters out of the way and we are looking to keep building on that for the next game,” added Schmidt in another Volleyball Canada release.

Canada plays the Dominican Republic Wednesday night. Updated scores can be found here.

Schmidt is a former national team player and has coached the Canadian NextGen team.

by Curtis Galbraith