Lorna Tinio came to Carlyle from the Philippines and she brought her passion for volleyball with her. A former varsity-level player, Tinio has already started a women's volleyball team-the Carlyle Lady Bombers- and has also hosted a local tournament for the community's Filipino women, which she hopes to expand next year to include teams from throughout the southeast corner of the province.
“Volleyball is big in the Philippines,” says Tinio, a married mother of six. “And for the Filipino women here, it's a chance to stay fit, to socialize and to have fun while we meet each other.”
“At our first tournament here in Carlyle on August 21, we had 24 ladies come-from ages 12 to late forties,” says Tinio. “Anyone is welcome to join. We had three teams of eight and I really wanted to introduce volleyball to the ladies here, whether they've played in the past or not.”
“It's not just to inspire all of us to stay fit; it's a social thing as well. A lot of the ladies here are moms and many work more than one job. Even though we all live in Carlyle, a lot of us don't know each other, because we're already very busy with our families and work and other responsibilities,” she adds.
“Because of that, it wasn't easy to unite them,” adds Tinio. “It's even hard to gather everyone together for a practice. But we did it this year, with a tournament for just our town and next year, hopefully, we can turn it into an invitational tournament and invite Filipino ladies from other towns.”
Tinio says she was partly inspired by the success of the Filipino men's basketball teams in Carlyle, southeast Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
“It's like the men's basketball. They practice and play in tournaments and it's also a chance for families to get together and get to know each other,” says Tinio. “I thought we could do the same thing with women's volleyball. In fact, like one of our Carlyle basketball teams-named the Carlyle Bombers-we are named the Carlyle Lady Bombers.”
Tinio-who has also helped organize local basketball tournaments-modeled her first women's volleyball tournament the same way.
“I intend to make this an invitational tournament and invite other towns,” she says. “In the Philippines, I worked at a technical school, so I used to organize tournaments there.”
“This year, we started our tournament early and provided breakfast, lunch and supper. Because we were playing outside-at CES-like we do in the Philippines, we took a break when the sun was too intense and ate and socialized,” she says. “The tournament went on until the evening. Naturally, if we were playing inside, the tournament wouldn't take so long, but there still would have been food and a chance to get to know each other. That's a Filipino thing.”
“The game is really my passion,” says Tinio. “I started playing in elementary school and I played through varsity in high school. In college, because of time, distance and my studies, I didn't play. And of course, once I became a mother and came to Canada, there didn't seem to be the time.”
“But here, it's very much like in the Philippines when it comes to volleyball. There is 10 months of summer there and it's played outside. Here, it seems like the reverse-and it's played inside, because of the weather.”
“What makes it the same is that here and in the Philippines, is that there were a lot of inter-town tournaments and every small town had a volleyball team,” she says. “I organized a lot of tournaments like that there and now I want to do it here.”
“Whether the ladies have played before or not, they are welcome. And of course, they can bring their children,” adds Tinio. “We only had one indoor practice before this tournament and with everyone's schedules, I was worried it wouldn't work out,” she says. “But it did. All of the girls were so happy-even though there were a few sprains.”
“Their legs were sore, their arms were sore, but everybody said they had so much fun.”
“They've been here for years, but before this, nobody supported this kind of gathering for Filipino ladies,” says Tinio.
“This-and volleyball-is now my passion.”
For more information, check out Carlyle Women's Volleyball on Facebook.
