Langley's Felicia Voss-Shafiq remembers her first major international competition as a member of Canada's women's sitting volleyball team in Rio de Janero as a "wild" experience.
"I had only joined the team maybe a year and a few months beforehand, we had played in front of maybe 50 to 100 people, if that," Voss-Shafiq recalled.
It was 2016, and the Canadian women had just qualified for the games.
"Our first match in Rio was against Brazil, and it was in front of 8,000 people," Voss-Shafiq described.
"And man, oh man, was that a shock. But it was incredible. The energy, just the noise, but just the sheer energy that there was in that stadium, was incredible. Because we played sitting volleyball, we were sitting on the ground.You could feel the ground vibrate with just the energy and the stomping and the cheering."
Canada finished seventh.
"It was amazing. That was our first Paralympic experience, and it was just wild."
During their second appearance, at the Tokyo Games in 2020, Voss-Shafiq and her teammates came close to winning a medal, finishing fourth.
A year after the Tokyo Games, Voss-Shafi was on the Canadian team that earned a historic silver medal at the 2022 world championships.
In Paris, Voss-Shafiq, a Willowbrook resident who plays on offence for the Canadian team, will make her third appearance for Canada at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
In preparation, she's been training hard, and working to adjust her sleep schedule before she goes, to reduce the impact of jet lag.
"I usually find I adjust relatively quickly when I get to the location" she commented. "It's when I'm back home, is when I have a problem."
Voss-Shafiq said it helps that she had an understanding employer, software company SAP Canada, who "makes it work" in term of scheduling.
At 44, she is the oldest member of the team, and laughed as she describes how younger teammates like to tease her as the "most senior" person on the team.
Voss-Shafiq became an double below-the-knee amputee when she was in her early 30s, the result of contracting pneumonia that led to blood poisoning and two weeks in a coma.
"It opened a whole new world to me," she told the Langley Advance Times.
"Being able to be a part of this community of people with disabilities, and be a part of para sports, being able to continue playing a sport that I love in its adaptive version, it makes me so happy."
The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will take place Aug. 28 to Sept. 8 in Paris. Canada was expected to send 130 athletes.
Sitting volleyball competitions will take place Aug. 29 till Sept. 7 at North Paris Arena.
Canada will face off in three preliminary matches – against Slovenia on Aug. 29, Brazil on Aug. 31, and Rwanda on Sept. 2.
The semifinals are Sept. 5, with the medal matches on Sept. 7.
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