About the Design:
2025’s design is all about bringing the nation together! Every year, Nationals is a cross-country, all-province-and-territory party bringing together athletes from across the nation. When you’re hosting the largest youth sporting event in Canada, only something as big as the Canadian map can reflect the excitement, pride, and enthusiasm of 20,000+ athletes at the peak of their skill.
This week we had the chance to sit down with our talented Marketing and Communications senior manager Carolina Tancon to chat all about the process for designing this year’s national’s apparel.
We learned that this process starts months prior to the events. The concept stage begins as far back as November the year before, when Carolina and our graphic design team work in tandem with Volleyball Canada to conjure up fresh themes and ideas. Choosing the right concept is a delicate balance between creating something unique and yet still cohesive with the existing Nationals apparel. Unique, trendy and long-lasting are all words that came to mind during this blueprint phase.
Expressing her passion for this project, Carolina says, “My favourite thing about the Nationals merch is seeing people wearing it after the fact. I think it’s really cool to see that people are proud at the event but when their pride continues afterwards, that is ultimately a goal of mine”. Achieving this comes with consciously factoring in colour choices and the technical details of the design. The effort and care that goes into this entire process is made worth it when we see players still wearing their Nationals apparel at other competitions year-round.
We always try to pay homage to Volleyball Canada’s national team by using overlapping elements, including number fonts, logos and VC’s establishing date. The theme for 2025 was Canadian pride. “We wanted to create a design that would connect all of these teams, from the west coast to the east coast, and everywhere in-between” says Carolina. Ultimately, we landed on a classic map of Canada, integrating a volleyball net to represent the nation-wide reach of the Nationals event.
A lot of time is spent curating a unique colour palette every year. Colours that do well at previous competitions are brought back in varying versions, like the forest green crewneck sweater from last year, which is back in a hoodie version for 2025. A new, never-used-before colour in this year’s palette is our classic pink, which was a smash hit with our models during the apparel photoshoot. Each year, we make sure to select a few Nationals apparel colours that are exclusively available during the *PRESALE*.
About the *PRESALE*:
The *PRESALE* for Volleyball Canada Youth Nationals event merchandise opens on March 18th on volleyballstuff.net. The *PRESALE* is a great way to ensure you can grab the apparel you want in your colour and size. Don’t worry, we’ll have well-stocked booths at each Nationals event, but the *PRESALE* is the best way to guarantee you’ll get your colour and size before the booth starts selling out! It also means not having to wait or waste your down-time waiting in line. You can show up to the event already decorated in your trendy merchandise!
Why else should you shop the presale? There are apparel items that are exclusively available during presale and no other time! These include the pink crewneck, ash long sleeve, royal blue hoodie, and the maroon quarter zip.
Never accidentally swap sweaters with your teammates again! Exclusively during the *PRESALE*, you can add your name and number to your merchandise. This customization perk won’t be available at the events.
We’re super excited to see everyone at Nationals this year. Remember skip the line, shop the *PRESALE*!
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