The Parkland Vipers Volleyball Club will have someone new at the helm next season as program founder Ted Rea retires from the role as organizer.

Noting it has been more than six years since his own family has been involved with the program, Rea said the program had more than 100 girls registered with teams from Grades 5 to 11.

“And I think with so much interest and the coaches we’ve got involved now and the parents that are involved, I thought it would be a good time to step away and have them take on the task as a group and take over the program,” he said.

Rea started the program in 1998 for what he called selfish reasons, a desire to win a provincial championship at the high school level.

“And we had to have a club team to develop those skills a little bit further in order to do that,” he said.

That first team back in 1998 consisted of mostly girls from Dauphin.

“But we had a few girls from out of town,” Rea added.

The next year, the program grew with players from Gilbert Plains, Winnipegosis and Grandview joining the program.

For the first few years, it was just Rea involved coaching one team.

“And then there was a group that got together with Jeremy Love’s daughter Tabi coming up that decided to do a few teams. So we had a few age groups going,” he said.

That lasted for a little while, Rea said. The number of teams continued, but the organization eventually went by the wayside.

“The parents that were involved, their daughters graduated and moved on and nobody really wanted to continue with the program. I’d been doing it before and knew the ins and outs and decided to just take on the task myself,” he said.

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