Wandering River — Amber Skyrpan and her Team Canada Paralympic sitting volleyball team finished the Tokyo Paralymic Games in fourth place overall — losing the bronze medal match to Brazil on September 4.
The Canadian team did beat Italy and Japan, but lost to China and Brazil in round-robin play in Tokyo before losing the semifinal match. The women's team from the US went on to take the gold medal after beating the Chinese team in the finals.
Returning to her current home in Edmonton on September 6, the local athlete told LakelandToday that the finishing result, despite being out of the medals, is an improvement from the team's seventh-place finish at their first entrance into the Games at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio De Janeiro.
Skyrpan, 29, has been with the sitting volleyball team since its inception in 2008. She has seen the year-over-year improvements, with the team winning gold at the 2020 ParaVolley qualifier for the Paralympics, and bronze medals at the 2015 and 2019 Parapan Am Games. Bringing her own experience to the current team, including international medals going back to 2011, Skyrpan is looking forward to pushing for Paralympic medals at the next Paralympics in Paris in 2024.
“I’m very tempted to continue on,” she said, looking forward to the next Paralympic Summer Games. “We’ll see what life has in store.”
Playing to win
Born with a rare, non-hereditary condition called proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD) Skyrpan was born without a femur in her right leg. She underwent surgery at eight years of age which replaced her upper leg with her lower leg flipped backwards allowing the foot and/or ankle to become the knee or prosthetic attachment point. She didn't let any challenges get in her way as she played on volleyball teams in her school years in Wandering River and Plamondon.
“My mom played, my dad played (volleyball), that’s how they met and I just kind of always wanted to play it like everyone else in the community (of Wandering River),”
At the time, Skyrpan hadn't thought about sitting volleyball. She just played with the other students.
“Growing up I figured I was the only one,” she said. “There was no one in Plamondon, there was no one in Wandering River, there was no one in Lac La Biche, there was no one in Athabasca that I knew of."
When she was 16 and playing in a standing volleyball tournament for Ecole Plamondon she met another young teen with the same condition. She told Skyrpan they should try to form a sitting volleyball team. They quickly located two other women as the plan took shape, soon adding more players, coaches and training.
Eight years after they began, the team had enough members and training to qualify for the 2016 Paralympics in Rio.
With high ambitions, their athletic skills, and exposure from Parlaympic Games coverage, Skyrpan says each year they see more and more interest. She says the training camps and practices are rigorous with strength and endurance training. Over the last two years leading up the Tokyo games, the COVID-19 pandemic made the training and exercise schedules even more challenging. The pandemic also caused shortages in some much-needed training equipment.
“Weights were a hot commodity in COVID, so people were doing backpacks (holding bottles of) windshield washer fluid. Just making weights out of anything and then adjusting it accordingly,” she said, adding that the pandemic also kept coaches and players distanced for hitting drills and strategy planning. “Our coaches, they watched us over Zoom and watched our contacts of the ball and gave us feedback.”
Making the team is one challenge, said Skyrpan, but leaving your family to travel half way around the world during a global pandemic was very tough to do. Married, and the mom to two step-children, Skyrpan said it was difficult being in Tokyo with her family staying behind. Fortunately, the back-home support set her up with home movies and video calls to cheer her on, with her kids wearing her uniforms from past games.
“They sent me a little video...,” she said. “I have an old jersey so one’s wearing my jersey and one’s wearing my older Team Canada gear."
Skyrpan, who customarily wears the No. 12 jersey for her Team Canada squad hopes to be playing in tournaments and qualifiers in the coming months.
* With files from Rob McKinley and Heather Stocking
