Unfinished business

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When it comes to the sport of volleyball, a lot of Marauders take it very seriously.

The men’s and women’s team put a lot of time into their training and preparation every single day, and when they’re not practicing on the court, they’re putting in time with strength, conditioning and mental preparation off of the court.

Austin Campion-Smith and Jori Mantha are just two examples of Marauders that have managed to take the sport as far as they can, both at the collegiate level and on a national level. Although both athletes have been outstanding contributions to the Marauders program throughout the years, they feel like their work here is not done. After coming back from the CIS Championships without a gold medal for two years in a row, their goal here is clear. They came back to win a national championship as a Marauder before they end their collegiate volleyball career.

While Campion-Smith is one of the best setters in the league, he has a humble upbringing in how he has gotten to where he is today.

“I wasn’t a big name, no other school wanted me, I didn’t get a scholarship to come here at all, when I came here, Dave pretty much said you’ll be a red shirt in your first year,” said Campion-Smith. “But things kind of just went my way, one of our setters quit, and I was just kind of the only guy here, so that started my journey here at Mac.”

Campion-Smith was originally set on coming to Mac after watching his cousin Josh Lichty play on the team as a setter for four years. He was instantly captivated by the atmosphere, level of play, and the coaching of Dave Preston. In his grade 12 year, McMaster was the only school that he applied to.

“I just wanted to come here to play volleyball. So I didn’t apply anywhere else,” said Campion-Smith. In his first-year as a setter, Campion-Smith managed to pull off the unthinkable, and help the team upset the Western Mustangs and win an OUA Championship in the Western gym. This marked the start of good things to come for the freshmen setter.

“He ended up starting in his first-year and that wasn’t a plan that he and I had discussed,” said Preston. In his time at McMaster, Campion-Smith was the setter on the court for three out of four OUA Championships won. For his final year, Campion-Smith is one of five captains for the team, as voted by his teammates.

“I’ve never been a great speaker or people person, but they decided to vote me in as a captain,” said Campion-Smith. “That was one of my proudest moments because it came from the team.”

Preston believes that Campion-Smith’s leadership abilities are one of the main transitions that he has made from a freshman to a senior.

“He’s grown as a leader, he has an ability to influence people around him rather than just do his own thing in his quiet and calm way.” Campion-Smith will always be a supporter of the team, and he’ll never forget his time playing for McMaster.

“I’ll definitely be wearing maroon for the rest of my life for sure,” said Campion-Smith.

For Mantha, his is a story of skill and success from when he first started playing the sport. Although he started to pursue volleyball seriously when he was in grade seven, he didn’t join a club team until he was in grade ten. That year, he played on his high school team. The squad went undefeated. The team went on to win Quad-A OFSAA in that same year.

“I’ve never been on a team that has had to struggle to do well,” said Mantha. His volleyball skills were recognized early on by coaches everywhere. In his grade 12 year, Mantha was the top recruit in the province, and every coach in Ontario made a run for him.

But the decision to come to Mac was an easy one for two reasons.

One—he has a large family-base here, with his grandma and his two aunts that come out to support him in his matches and that he visits regularly.

“They make me food and bring me food or I stay at their house for the night which is huge too,” said Mantha. “So the support system I have around Mac is a huge influence for me coming here.”

And two—Preston recruited him and drew him in to want to compete for the program in a way that no other coach that had talked to him did.

“There’s a lot of coaches that I talked to that promised things, like you’re looking at a starting position in your first year, and we have a great program, I like Dave because he was different,” said Mantha. Preston promised Mantha that if he put the work in that needed to be done, then maybe he would get a shot to be a starter. He promised Mantha that once he did this, he would get a shot to prove himself even further.

“He was a lot more real than some of the other coaches that I talked to,” said Mantha.

As it turned out, Preston was equally captivated by Mantha. After doing some research on Mantha, he found his club team’s website. In the bio section, under goals and aspirations, Mantha put “to be the best player in the world.”

“That’s a pretty bold statement for a 17-year-old man to make, it’s an even more bold statement for you to put on a website, and for you to put on paper and let the rest of the world see that this is what you’re going to hold yourself accountable to,” said Preston. After five valuable years of experience at McMaster, Mantha has learned to put the hard work in to become the best player he possibly can be.

“I think it culminated in one year with him being the OUA player of the year and the previous year with him being named the OUA MVP,” said Preston.

Mantha is also one of the five captains of the team, and has taken his role very seriously.

“Mantha appears on the outside to be pretty care-free, he loves to play loose, he loves to play with a lot of passion, but deep down it means a lot to him to be a good guy and a good teammate,” said Preston.

Off the court, Mantha likes to rally the troops and try to get everyone together to enjoy their experience as a Marauder. While Mantha is known for getting the team to let loose and have a good time, he has had a serious impact on the team when it comes to their play on the court. At their three-day exhibition tournament at Ohio State early on in the season, Mantha made a team-room speech that the team has been rallying behind all season.

“In his own words and in his own way, he summarized his career here but just put it in a way that everybody completely understood it,” said Preston. “My light bulb went off and said ‘wow, he gets it now.’”

Campion-Smith and Mantha still have their eyes on winning nationals as the end of their collegiate volleyball career is almost coming to a close. Volleyball will still be a very important aspect of both of their lives, however, as they will both try to pursue a career in a professional league in Europe after training at the full-time training centre in Gatineau, Que.

For Campion-Smith, if this goal does not work out, he has plans of starting his own business in landscaping.

Mantha has a goal of playing professionally is a very serious one, and he would love to get the opportunity to represent his country someday.

“My greatest dream before playing pro, before playing everything, was always to play for Team Canada. And that’s where, hopefully in the future, I’d like to be, that’s the goal.”

While both of these athletes have had very different paths in where they have come to be today, where they are now, and where they would like to see themselves in the future, they happen to have one major thing in common. Their character, which goes beyond volleyball, and beyond competition, is part of the reason why they are so successful in what they do, and is part of the reason why they are back here, doing anything and everything they can to win a first-ever national championship for McMaster in volleyball.

“The common thread is that they are both outstanding human beings,” said Preston. Their story at McMaster is one that is incomplete. They came back in order to finish their story in a way that they can be satisfied with. They came back to get the chance to finish the story the right way. Preston has all the faith in the world for these two outstanding athletes, that they will be able to conclude their story at McMaster in an amazing way.

“I think there’s a couple more weeks in the story, there’s a couple more chapters and you don’t get to pick your own endings in life. The chapters can’t be written before they happen, but I really like where this story is going.”

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