Darren Horn already has an accomplished resume when it comes to coaching volleyball, but he’s about to add another line to that.
And it may be the biggest one yet.
The longtime coach from Yellowknife is in St. Catharines, Ont., to assist with the 2023 Youth National Team Women’s Canada Cup program under the Volleyball Canada banner. Horn is one of eight coaches from around the country who have been invited to help a group of 26 players who start arriving Thursday.
It’s the first year for the program, which is one level below the Next Gen program, and that program feeds into the senior national team. The ultimate end goal will be to have Team Canada Red and Team Canada White compete at the 2023 Canada Cup from July 19 to 23 at Canada Games Park and Brock University in St. Catharines.
Horn said the chance to apply to take part came out of the blue and he found out about it while recovering from knee surgery in January.
“These sorts of opportunities aren’t advertised publicly and I thought about it when I heard,” he said. “On the last day, I told myself, ‘What the heck?’ and tossed my name into the hat. You don’t know if you don’t try.”
Horn’s application included references from coaches in Yellowknife, but he rated his chances of getting invited around the same as a snowball’s chance in hell.
“People were asking me if I had heard and I told them no, so I figured they had gone with other people,” said Horn.
But it was while he was at Stanton Territorial Hospital getting some bloodwork done that he received the call he thought would never come.
“I’m sitting in the chair and I get the call telling me that I was invited,” he said. “I very nearly fell out of my chair as we were going over the role that I would be playing.”
That role is as a guest coach, and there are several responsibilities Horn will have while he’s at the camp. It began with some online training prior to leaving for St. Catharines with help from Carolyn O’Dwyer, head coach of the Next Gen program.
“She went through the systems with us and all the key points to watch for,” said Horn.
The on-court business will happen twice per day for the duration of the camp, which ends on July 18. There will be classroom sessions and video work for all the players; Horn said the film sessions will give the athletes a chance to watch and review their play on the court and debrief with each other.
“These are amazing athletes,” he said. “We aren’t expecting them to be at a really top-notch level, but this is a way to get them used to the (national team) system and what they can expect if they decide to stay with it.”
Getting to St. Catharines was pretty much all out-of-pocket for Horn. There wasn’t any funding available to him from anywhere in the NWT — both Sport North and the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs have funding for coaching development, but it’s geared for Northern-based programs.
“I thought about it and wondered how I would be able to afford to go,” said Horn. “It was my wife who told me to go and we’d figure it out. She said it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and when would I be able to do something like this again?”
While Horn will be working on player development, it’s also coaching development for him, he added.
“I’m hoping to be able to bring something back to the NWT,” he said. “There are seven other coaches and I’ll be learning from them, so it’s a great personal development opportunity. I think there will be a chance to learn some new things and bring the NWT up to speed with what’s happening at the national level.”