Matthew Passalent joins SK Zadruga AICH/DOB as his first professional team after his tenure at McMaster

Before stepping on to the court as a member of SK Zadruga AICH/DOB, Matthew Passalent began his volleyball journey in the various volleyball camps hosted by McMaster Athletics & Recreation. As such, he fostered good relationships with the coaches there, so joining the McMaster University men’s volleyball team was not unfamiliar territory for Passalent. He described his transition as very welcoming.

In his first year on the McMaster volleyball team, he followed the guidance of the senior members. He watched many of their games prior to enrolling at McMaster — he looked up to them and modelled his game after them. 

“It was awesome to have the opportunity to practice with [the McMaster athletes], watch them play up close and get a good grasp on their mentality,” said Passalent.

Passalent explained that he received more playing time and entered more of a leadership role as the years progressed. He recalled how during his fourth and fifth years, the rookies looked up to him in a similar way that he looked up to the upper-years during his rookie year.

“It was awesome to have the opportunity to practice with [the McMaster athletes], watch them play up close and get a good grasp on their mentality,” said Passalent.

Aside from playing as outside hitter for the team, his position varied from opposite to outside hitter. He did not receive much playing time during his rookie year; he played a few points at the end of matches. It was not until around his third-year Passalent started for the team.

“We have really good older guys, playing for Team Canada, the junior team, etc . . . It was really hard to crack a starting spot in your first or second year,” said Passalent.

“We have really good older guys, playing for Team Canada, the junior team, etc . . . It was really hard to crack a starting spot in your first or second year,” said Passalent.

Passalent recounts his biggest achievement during his tenure at McMaster was winning the Ontario University Athletics gold medal in his third-year. 

“It was a record of winning the OUA championship in six consecutive years. That was my third championship. It's really cool to be a part of the team and a part of history,” said Passalent. 

With regards to personal awards, he has the most pride for receiving the OUA West Player of the Year during his fourth-year.

“When my coach told me, I was really shocked because I was injured for most of the year,” said Passalent.

In winter 2019, Passalent and the team participated in the 2019 Can Am Holiday Volleyball Showcase in which teams from the United States and Canada competed against one another. Passalent recollected how this was a major downside in his career, having won no games at the invitational tournament. However, after playing in this tournament, the team bounced back with a major win against Trinity Western University, then the top team in U Sports.

Playing overseas has been quite different on the court for Passalent. He stated how many players come from different parts of the world while learning different techniques.

“I just thought it would be how I was used to in Canada. But we were doing drills I never heard of. It was really fascinating. It's definitely good to learn a lot,” said Passalent.

“I just thought it would be how I was used to in Canada. But we were doing drills I never heard of. It was really fascinating. It's definitely good to learn a lot,” said Passalent.

In fall 2020, Passalent joined SK Zadruga AICH/DOB in Austria to play for his first professional team. 

“It was a completely different vibe. This town I was living in was very small. Everyone knew each other. You can walk to anywhere in town within 15 minutes. Being from such a small town, the team had hardcore, dedicated fans. It felt like a really great atmosphere at the few games I participated in,” said Passalent. 

Adapting to this new lifestyle was not as difficult as Passalent thought it would be.

“I found that I had to get into a strict schedule. I feel I had to keep eating and fueling myself, doing it at the right times. It's a grind out there. If you don't take care of your body, it will come back and punish you,” said Passalent.

As the team predominantly spoke English, Passalent did not run into many language barrier issues. 

“I found that I had to get into a strict schedule. I feel I had to keep eating and fueling myself, doing it at the right times. It's a grind out there. If you don't take care of your body, it will come back and punish you,” said Passalent.

A typical day for Passalent begins with waking up at 7:30 a.m., eating breakfast and then working out at 8 a.m. Afterwards, he would go grocery shopping to make a bigger breakfast and take a midday nap. Then, he would join the team for lunch followed by recreational activities, such as watching Netflix. Around 6:00 p.m., the team would practice until 8:00 p.m. Lastly, he would cook a large dinner and head to bed. 

Before Passalent tore his rotator cuff this past October, he participated in four qualifying matches as part of the CEV Champions League for the 2020-2021 season.

“The pool we were in was tough. We were slated as underdogs. We had to play the third-ranked team and number one team in Russia,” said Passalent.

In his first game with the team, Passalent led the team in scoring as they captured a win. Despite this victory, the team lost the rest of their qualification matches. Passalent was only able to play in the first three until his shoulder injury occurred. He states that most likely he will need to get surgery, following a four-five month recovery time. 

“Hopefully I see myself still playing volleyball but maybe in a higher-level league like in Italy, France, Germany or Turkey, as they also pay better money,” said Passalent.

While recovering from his injury, Passalent will actively seek out a new contract to head back onto the court, either with SK Zadruga AICH/DOB or a brand new team.

If the happiest moment of one’s life is meant to be a jubilating climax, it’s fitting that mine occurred on the Eiffel Tower. Though the clichéd moment has often spurred inspiration for countless mimic lovers and over-inflated romantics, I neither felt love nor some overarching unity on the Parisian metallic beast. I instead gazed as millions of others had before and millions of others would in the future at a sprawling landscape peopled with artists and doctors, lawyers and criminals, politicians and savages, and I felt so perfectly alone. I was one among many, a centimeter against a ruler, a nobody in a world of nobodies. I wasn’t liberated; I was chained, restricted, and limited. I was shackled. And by realizing this, I was anything but.

This, though, means little at all by itself for it is not the revelation that is appreciated, but rather the volatile journey, with its valleys and troughs, its unexpected chances and wasted preparations, that are praised and cherished. There on the Eiffel Tower I was not a singularity, I was not a moment. I was the resultant outcome of everything that brought me there, from the food I ate to the girls I kissed to the classes I took and to those I didn’t. In all, I was all, and that is why I was happy.

Up until that point, I was regimented into the routine of everyday. I focused mainly on schedules and rescheduling until I found the pulse of small problems and made them astronomical. Nine o’clock, I woke up. By ten, I was working. By six, eating. Eight, reading. Eleven, washing. Twelve, sleeping, then repeating in that order.

Europe was meant to change this rhythmic burden of everyday. When I started planning for the trip, my expectations were informed by the myths of culture and idealism. In Paris, in Berlin, in Amsterdam, I was to find the ideal life, one sustained by the darkest coffee and the cheapest wine and the beautifully ruffled yet perfectly maintained haircuts and clothes. Cities would glint their forgotten raindrops in ancient archways and only I, when gazing up into the bricks that grew into skyless spires, would sense the permanence of this place. Like a stream rippled by a skipping rock, the very throb of the Gothic architecture and the cobbled streets would become personal to me.

In a way, they did. From eight in the morning until two the next day, I, along with a fellow student and Silhouette editor, Cooper Long, travelled the various cities with our plans abandoned. When we arrived first in Amsterdam, we got lost in the first fifteen minutes. And this trend of mindless wanderlust, one which my previously cloistered, protected and nurtured livelihood never underwent, inevitably continued wherever we went.

As a result, I became Kacper fully: an unfiltered, unmitigated, confused boy imitating a man imitating a parrot imitating others. I saw through my falsities, my need for control and reigns, and I let go of all that I pretended to be. I think that person was left somewhere in Amsterdam where the rain drips on and where I was startled by my own voice in the darkness.

But this newfound light was not Paris, and these moments were not my happiest. Such a responsibility of an all-consuming joy instead belonged to the endless night sky wishing that the sun would rise.

It did, and I woke up and the day wore on and the night came again only to end sometime when the curtain was raised, teeth were washed, and I was back home, or somewhere, or both.

Before then, I was on top of the world, or Paris’s part of it, and I was laughing. I think that’s why I was happy. Because in Paris, I learned that the ideal human is a traveler exploring the unknown. There at the top of France, I was that human, but so was everyone else, and for the first time in my short, short life, that meant something. I didn’t have to be unique. I just had to belong. All of us were under the same Heaven waiting for the clouds to part.

From above, it is said that everyone looks like ants, but from below, so do those who tower above us. I try to think about this now and again because it provides more than a momentary happiness. Though it sounds ridiculous, it allows me to see beyond the glumly cantankerous and the stratospheric troubles that seem to surround me and everyone else in a mysterious, intricate plan. In fact, it let me forgo that nebulous plan altogether. Now I am happy to live with uncertainty, with not knowing. To me, and to the person I have become since the romantics of Europe, that is knowing enough already.

Image c/o Terrazzo on Flickr

After spending about five weeks in Europe this past summer, I compiled an impressive collection of secondhand books. There was the entire Harry Potter series in French, the Kurt Vonnegut novel with a love note scrawled on the inside cover, a look-book of Yves St. Laurent’s designs, a funny little picture book about two very ugly monsters falling in love in Paris, a vintage Spiderman comic – and the list goes on. My luggage was already slightly overweight when I flew into Lyon, and the situation became much, much worse on my flight home.

I went back and forth between weighing my suitcase and rearranging my things for about three hours in the middle of the airport. I threw out towels, clothing, shoes – but I refused to part with my beloved books. The result was that I wore several layers of clothing (dresses, socks, men’s jackets) with books stuffed in the waistbands of my many pants. I was asked more than once if I was traveling up North (which really doesn’t even make sense…why would I have already started layering up?)

When I recounted this story back home, everybody asked me, why on earth did you buy so many books? All these books could have been purchased here or found online, why was it necessary to fly them over from another continent?

I was indignant. Where would I find the entire Harry Potter series in French that could document my journey in St. Etienne so beautifully? There was a little second-hand book and record store just outside of the university that I was studying at and I stumbled into it on my lunch break one day and discovered the third Harry Potter. It became like a mini-adventure, each day hoping that I would find another book in the series.

Where would I find a Kurt Vonnegut with a “Chere Marie, tu me manques!” written in barely legible handwriting on the inside? When else would I visit “Shakespeare & Co.” – the place that famous writers from all over the world would sleep and write and live – and find the St. Laurent look-book? When else would I stroll along the River Seine, looking at all the vintage booths and learning the owners’ strange and lovely stories?

There were classic record shores at every turn, hundred-year-old books being sold at every street corner, and colourful, interesting thrift stores for people of all styles. I felt nostalgic about these items, being drawn into my own Midnight in Paris, reminiscing a past that I found far more poetic. I felt nostalgic about my own two-decade-long past, reflecting on the decisions I had made and feeling reassured that I had made the right ones because here I was, walking down the streets of Paris with my best friends. And I felt an overwhelming nostalgia hovering above me, fully aware that in a few short weeks it would envelope me whole once I returned home. It was a nostalgia for this trip where I had found new dreams, new identities, new friends, and new love.

And so, we present to you ANDY’S “nostalgia” issue – as we look back on all those things that have brought us to where we are now.