Hello,
 
It’s been a few years since I have written a post for my College blog, but I felt like it would be a good time to reach out to the GMVA community as you are nearing the end of a grinding lockdown.
 
I am 6 weeks into my 5th and final year at Lakeland College in Alberta, Canada. This place has been my home for over 4 years, and I have had the experience of a lifetime. With Canada allowing 5 years of eligibility for Collegiate sports, I decided to extend my 40 class Bachelor of Commerce over 5 years in order to play out my eligibility. For those who haven’t, I would encourage you to read my earlier blog posts where I discussed the struggles of being part of a program without a history of success.
 
I can happily say that after winning more games every season in my time here, last year we broke an 11 year playoff drought for the Lakeland Men’s Volleyball Team. We went from being the easiest team to beat in the league to a highly respected, defensive minded squad that was capable of winning every night. Personally, I was honoured with an All-Conference selection as well as winning Male Athlete of the Year for my College, which hopefully gives hope to any of those shorter players reading this. My vertical jump and height are nothing to brag about, I am 183cm and rarely touch over 320cm in my spike touch testing (despite Luke’s best efforts) but was still able to finish in the top 5 in the league for kills thanks to a lot of tips, wipes, deep corner shots and maybe a bit of luck!
 
With the risk of sounding arrogant, I believe it is important for young GMVA athletes to know the opportunities available to you if you work hard. After graduating this year I will have had a $60 000 degree fully paid for by my athletic scholarship. On top of that I have now received close to $15 000 worth of awards and grants and have been able to work over here to pay for my residence costs and living. I was extremely lucky to be able to fulfil my dream of playing College volleyball, but I also worked as hard as I could to make the most of my opportunities.
 
As the lockdowns continue to drag out back in Melbourne, and volleyball events continue to be cancelled, and motivation starts to be tested, I would encourage you to all to think about if a North American Scholarship is still a dream of yours. GMVA and Luke changed my life by helping me find this opportunity. All of the internationals in this league (including a bunch of Aussies) have absolutely loved getting to compete at an extremely high level, whether it be for an 8 month season or 5 full years. Don’t let a 6-month break from volleyball ruin the passion you had for it when things were perfect. Recruiting for the following season (September) typically happens around February so those who are chasing that dream have time to put themselves out there and get prepared.
 
As always please feel free to reach out to me on social media with absolutely any questions you may have. I have plenty of contacts and knowledge about the Canadian College/University system and would love to help young GMVA athletes chase their dreams like I did!

Matt Peck

​I remember as I was going through Year 12 I started to push my mind away from the idea of playing College Volleyball. My studies were consuming a huge amount of my time, I wasn’t training as much as I had in previous years, and I didn’t feel like I was improving. I decided to set some lofty goals with my university course selections, and if I fell short I would do GMVA Centre of Excellence. Fast forward 2 and a half years and that decision proved to be one of the best that I will ever make. 
I originally had doubts I would be able to get a scholarship in Canada, assuming they wouldn’t take a libero when they could get a 195cm giant from anywhere in the world. I was lucky enough to receive a full scholarship and have just completed my 2nd year at Lakeland College. My first year I was starting Lib and played the full season. After another offseason of lifting and training at GMVA CoE I was given the opportunity to try playing Pass Hitter and grabbed it with both hands. My league is about the same standard as Prems at State League, so it was overwhelming at first, but I went on to be the leading scorer as captain of our team. 
My volleyball achievements so far have been beyond what I could have hoped for, but personally I don’t have plans to play professionally in Europe or set my whole life up to have a volleyball career. This meant for me I took my College experience as an opportunity to use all my hard work to have the time of my life playing a sport I love, whilst also getting a free education and setting myself up for a successful life. 
This past year I completed my Diploma in Accounting, which is halfway towards my Bachelor of Commerce. My education is entirely paid for thanks to International waivers and a scholarship from the Athletics department. I was able to get work as a Residence assistant which paid for my rent, and got work coaching the U18 Club team here in the town of Lloydminster. This meant my only expenses this year were my cost of living (food, travel and fun!) which worked out to be around $350 a month. Now obviously every College athlete has a different situation, and some are more fortunate than others with costs. I think it is very important for young athletes to know that a College Volleyball Scholarship can be an extremely great financial opportunity if you look for work opportunities and study hard. 
I have decided to stay for the Summer here in Canada to work full time cleaning dorms with some of my best mates. I have also channelled my inner Luke Campbell and started a Beach Volleyball Program here in my town of 50 000 people (see the news story below at 9:30). In it’s first year I have 34 athletes who have never played Beach Volleyball before coming to learn from me and 2 other College athletes. 
Apologies for the extensive bragging in this post about everything but I remember being so unaware of what my life would be like before coming to Canada so I hope athletes are reading these blogs and decide to pursue their College Volleyball dreams! It opens so many doors for travelling, friendships, education and work. 
As always if anybody has any questions please feel free to shoot me a message! 
Matt

​It has now been 7 weeks since I said goodbye to my home and flew across the world to begin my college volleyball journey. It was something I had dreamt about doing since I was 14 years old and the fact I was finally moving to Canada was extremely surreal but very exciting.
After a long flight I got picked up at the airport by 3 of my new team mates who for the next 3 hours answered a lot of my questions about Canada as well as asking me all about Australia. We eventually arrived in Lloydminster, Alberta where I would arrive at my new home, Lakeland College. Lakeland College is on the east border of Alberta right next to Saskatchewan. It is quite a small school with approximately 2000 students on the Lloydminster campus but has a huge passion for its sport. Lakeland plays in the ACAC (where many Australians including Luke Brisbane, James Haythorne and multiple interstate volleyballers play) which is regarded as the second highest College/University volleyball league in Canada. Unfortunately for the Rustlers the school generally offers 2 year diplomas and often has students transfer to larger University’s to further their studies. This places a huge burden on the sports programs who develop young players only to see them leave and thrive at other schools.
The first week consisted of getting everything set up such as my new bedroom (I live on Campus in houses that fit 8 people), finding out where all my classes are and learning a whole bunch of new names. Our volleyball squad this year was 22 athletes which automatically meant I had heaps of mates who looked out for me from the start. We also have 2 other international players from Honduras who can often relate to me when I get confused about Canadian culture/lingo. I am studying general business which is a 2 year diploma and so far quite enjoyable.
Now for the volleyball side of things. Generally we will train for 90 minutes Monday-Thursday evenings after doing weights during the day, then play Friday and Saturday night at 8pm. As the trainings are only 90 minutes it is often a high intensity session with lots of competitive gameplay. Consistently having 20+ guys at training has allowed us to do some pretty cool drills and it also makes it extremely competitive for playing time. Only 14 people are allowed to travel/dress each game so it makes every training very important to ensure you can be part of that group. This lead to a strange feeling in our preseason games where we would ‘play our bench’ and rest all 7 starters so that everybody could get their chance to prove themselves. On the bright side I’ve managed to earn myself the role of starting libero which I’m extremely happy with. It was also a huge adjustment to change to using the green, white and red molten volleyballs as they travel much faster than a Mikasa and are very different to pass.
We have just had our first weekend of competition where we played an away game on Friday night, then both teams travelled back to Lloydminster to play at home. We lost the first away game 3-0 then managed to come home and after losing the first set, win the match 3-1. There was quite a decent crowd at both games and it was a very strange feeling to be playing in front of an away crowd where they would be constantly trying to throw us off our focus and loudly cheering for our opponents, kind of like playing against Heathfield at schools cup. On the contrary it was an incredible feeling to play and win in front of a home crowd where every point we win is celebrated by everybody in the gym.
That’s all from me for now. I honestly couldn’t be happier to be living out my dream at such a nice College. For all GMVA athletes I highly recommend that you dream big as this pathway is extremely achievable, as well as an excellent way to travel and potentially earn yourself free education. I would also recommend contacting Lakeland if you are looking to find your way over to Canada as they have an awesome campus and great volleyball program to get yourself familiar with College volleyball. If anybody has any questions about how the process works or what college is like chuck me a message or email me at Mattpeck14@gmail.com.