Eric Loeppky and Team Canada qualify for 2024 Paris Olympics

Steinbach's Eric Loeppky led the way on Sunday as Canada's National Men's Volleyball qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics. 

Loeppky says the Road to Paris Volleyball Qualifier took Team Canada to Xi’an China.  

“It was a crazy tournament. It was a 7-game tournament, 7 games in nine days and so there were three pools of eight dispersed in different locations throughout the world and then the top two teams from each pool qualified, so six teams. We got it done. We got it done officially on our last game, so it was pretty crazy. So many different emotions flooding in.” 

Canada's National Men's Volleyball Team. Photo provided by Volleyball World, the qualifying tournaments website.

Their final game was against Mexico on Sunday and Loeppky says it was tough. 

“That last game was pretty crazy. We were all so tired and we knew we just needed to muster up one more push. And Mexico, they would have been one of the easier opponents of the tournament but just because of how demanding physically and mentally the tournament had been up until that point, it was pretty intense getting through that.” 

Fortunately, Loeppky says they were able to get rolling in the second set and cruised through to victory from there.  

Not only did they take victory, qualifying for the Olympics, but Loeppky lead Team Canada on the attack, scoring 16 points. 

Loeppky has received many awards and won many tournaments, but Qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics felt like something else entirely. 

“Once we qualified, it was just kind of like this crazy hit of emotion. I just like remembered as a kid I had this crazy dream, I remember telling my parents ‘I want to go to the Olympics as a volleyball player.’ I just thought of all the time spent with my dad and my mom going to games, just playing in the backyard, teams, tournaments, high school, university, everything all built up to this moment. So yeah, it was super emotional for me.” 

Eric Loeppky playing with Team Canada. Photo provided by Volleyball World, the qualifying tournaments website.

Since then, it has been a whirlwind of travel, but Loeppky says it has been nice to hear from so many of his friends and former teammates. 

“It's been cool. I feel like a lot of people who have been a part of this journey have reached out and connected with me and given congratulations and saying ‘it's so cool to see how you've progressed from being just the little guy from Steinbach to this’. So yeah, it's been really cool. I've had so many sweet, kind messages in the last couple of days.” 

Loeppky says he didn’t play any volleyball for the first half of the summer because he was out with an illness and at that moment, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever play for Team Canada again. He notes “I was kind of ready to close the chapter on that but things turned out to be different, and now I'm here and it's just it's crazy, man.” 

Going forward, Loeppky says he will head back to Italy to continue playing for his professional team and reconnect with Team Canada for training in May.