Danielle Ellis Danielle Ellis

Danielle Ellis is captain of the women’s sitting volleyball team.

In 2020, she was named February’s 2020 Allianz Athlete of the Month after leading Team Canada to a gold win at the World ParaVolley final Paralympic qualification tournament in Halifax, earning a berth for the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo. She was also named the tournament’s “Most Outstanding Player.”

Ellis was a member of the team from 2009 – 2012. After a few years away, she returned to the Canadian women’s sitting volleyball team in the fall of 2015 and has remained a member since. She attended the 2019 Parapan Am Games (bronze), 2010, 2018, 2022 (silver) world championships and the 2016 and 2020 Paralympic Games.

Ellis and her teammates made history in 2016, as it marked the first time a Canadian sitting volleyball team competed at a Paralympic Games. They reached another milestone with silver at the 2022 World Championships.

Ellis, who lost her right leg below the knee due to cancer as a newborn, grew up with a love for sports and an appetite for competition. Although heavily involved in sport her whole life, she wasn’t aware of sitting volleyball or Paralympic sport until age 16. It was at a Trinity Western standing volleyball camp in 2007 that she was informed of the sport.

At the time there was no Canadian women’s sitting volleyball team, so she was instead put in contact with the United States’ women’s sitting volleyball coach Mike Hulett. It just so happened that Hulett had recently heard Canada was in fact starting up a team. He put Ellis in contact with the right person and just one year later, in 2008, Ellis was attending Canada’s first women’s training camp for sitting volleyball.

After falling short in qualifying for the London 2012 Paralympic Games, Ellis decided to leave the team and focus on her studies of becoming a paramedic at Justice Institute of BC, in New Westminster, BC.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

2019 Parapan Am Games… 2010, 2018, 2022 world championships… 2016, 2020 Paralympics… 2009-2012, 2015- present Canadian women’s sitting volleyball team member…

PERSONAL

Lives in Langley, BC… Favourite food is French food… Attended Justice Institute of BC…Lost her right leg to cancer as a new born…

NOTABLE INTERNATIONAL RESULTS

• 2022 World Championships – 2nd
• 2020 Paralmypic Games – 4th
• 2019 Parapan Am Games – 3rd
• 2018 World Championships – 7th
• 2016 Paralympic Games – 7th
• 2010 World Championships – 12th