A superb volleyball tactician

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This article was published 24/06/2024 (697 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Scott Koskie couldn’t have planned it this way.

He’s a 52-year-old rookie head coach, recently tabbed by UBC Okanagan to lead its men’s volleyball program, but there’s really nothing about his work history to suggest he is a greenhorn at any of it.

Thirteen years as a setter on Canada’s national team, with pro playing experience in Spain, France and Austria followed by multiple assignments with Volleyball Canada as an assistant coach on the national senior men’s and women’s teams.

Koskie and the game are inextricably linked.

“I’d always wanted to go back to coaching in some form,” says Koskie, who has spent the past nine years as Volleyball Manitoba’s provincial performance coach. “I wasn’t sure if it would be at university. I had a couple of conversations in the NCAA with some guys that I know down there, or maybe pro and go back to Europe. So, it was always part of the plan once the kids graduated.”

Sons Darian and Noah are at the University of Windsor where they play volleyball for the Lancers; daughter Alina is graduating from high school and so Koskie and his wife, Jaclyn, are pulling up their stakes and moving to Kelowna.

U Sports coaching jobs don’t come up very often — Koskie was a runner-up to Lupo Ludwig in the competition to replace a retiring Garth Pischke at the University of Manitoba in 2019 — but his candidacy was a real standout for UBCO director of athletics and recreation Tom Huisman.

“Anyone who has the opportunity to talk to Scott… they recognize really quickly that this is a person who cares about other people,” says Huisman. “Very personable. Very sincere. Very genuine.

“And then you look at what he’s done as an athlete at the university level, at the national level and at the professional level, he’s got the street cred as a former player. And then his coaching resume is outstanding.”

Reviving the program, which has gone through two non-playoff seasons that cost veteran head coach Brad Hudson his job in the ultra competitive Canada West, is the main goal.

The Heat went 3-21 in conference play last season but have some good talent returning and lose only one fifth-year player to graduation.

Zach van Geel, a fourth-year setter training this summer with the beach volleyball national team and 6-9 middle blocker Ashton South, a member of the national U21 indoor squad, should be good building blocks.

“They’ve got a good core group of guys that loves to play right and loves to learn… so that’s important,” says Koskie, who is meeting with his players online until he completes his contract with the MVA next month. “At that level everybody wants to be part of it but there’s only a small number of guys in any program anywhere, even the national team, that really love it.”

Huisman, who ran track at the U of M in the late 1980s when Koskie was just beginning his playing career with the Bisons, says Koskie’s association with coaching legend Garth Pischke was a major selling point.

So was Koskie’s work with young players.

“His track record and experience in that cohort, that age category, is so critical for us, being the late high school and then and then university ages,” says Huisman. “I mean, that’s what every university program is looking for — somebody who can relate, coach and be successful at that level.”

Pischke, who coached Koskie to national player of the year honours, two national titles and, while with the national team a bronze medal at the 1999 Pan Am Games, believes Koskie will be a smashing success.

He cites Koskie’s persistence to turn himself into a standout player at the university level.

“Scott wasn’t even on our roster the first year,” says Pischke. “He was a redshirt and it wasn’t because he wasn’t talented.

“It had had a lot to do with who was playing ahead of him who was already on the roster at that particular time, but certainly in a position of setting, it takes you longer to get on the floor than it does for for a hitter because the mental part of the game is so huge.”

Pischke says Koskie’s training has moulded a superb tactical mind.

“The neat thing about setters is they’re not just in the moment, they’re always five or six plays ahead of everybody else, right?” says Pischke. “They’ve got the rotations in their mind and they are remembering what worked last time or what didn’t work last time and what should work this time.”

Koskie is thinking ahead off the court, too.

“The part that excites me right is being able to do it on a day-to-day basis,” he says. “What I think will be really exciting, and also what’s probably going to be the biggest challenge, is being able to do this on a daily basis from September until March — all the way through.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca