Meteoric rise for national youth volleyball player from Lake Country

With less than two full seasons of organized volleyball on his resume, Lake Country’s Fynn McCarthy will represent Canada at an international competition later this month.

The Grade 12 George Elliot Secondary School student has been selected to play for Volleyball Canada’s under-18 national team competing at the U.S. high performance championships in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. July 19-24.

Concentrating mostly on hockey and basketball in his first two years of high school, McCarthy was talked into trying out for the Elliot Coyotes volleyball team by a friend in Grade 10. Under the guidance of veteran coach and former national-team player, Chris Frehlick, he quickly added the nuances of the game to his natural ability and his quickly spurting physical frame (he’s now 6-foot-6).

While he missed a good chunk of his first high school season of volleyball because of a broken collarbone suffered playing hockey, the middle blocker came back to show flashes of his huge potential. It was recommended to him by Frehlick that he try out for the Kelowna Volleyball Club’s U16 team.

Having not been on the Central Okanagan’s volleyball radar, McCarthy was placed on the KVC’s B team, but by the end of the 2015 spring club season, he was among the top players in the program, including those on the A squad.

He tried out for Team BC (U16) and again surprised most by being one of a small handful of B.C. players to be invited to an extended training camp with the youth national team.

McCarthy’s meteoric raise in the game continued in his Grade 11 year at Elliot this past fall and with the KVC in the spring.

Helping the Kelowna Volleyball Club KaPow — coached by yet another former national-team player in Paul Thiessen — to a fifth-place at the national club championships in Saskatoon, McCarthy was identified as a potential U18 national-team player. He was one of youngest of 25 players in Western Canada invited to a four-day training camp in Calgary.

While he admitted he felt he had a “50-50 chance” to be one of only six players from the West to make national team, it was an anxious two-week wait before he found out he had been chosen to play for Team Canada.

“I felt I had a strong camp, but being one of the youngest players, I wasn’t sure what would happened,” conceded McCarthy, who also was slotted in as a right-side hitter at the camp in Calgary. “But I guess they liked what they saw and the potential I showed. They said they really wanted me to be exposed to highest possible competition for the experience.”

McCarthy, who also credits his success this spring to Kyle Joslin, assistant coach with UBCO Heat men’s team and KVC assistant and the Heat's libero, Eli Risso (national junior team member), will join the other 12 players on the national youth (U18) roster for a training camp at Trinity Western University in Langley July 9-18 before heading to Florida.