University of Toronto Varsity Blues volleyball player Robin Melnick had a homecoming of sorts last week when the Varsity Blues and University of Guelph Gryphons opened the 2024 portion of the Ontario Universities Athletics women’s volleyball season at the Guelph Gryphons Athletics Centre.
Born in Guelph 23 years ago, the daughter of then Gryphons head coach Linda Melnick, a member of the Ontario Volleyball Hall of Fame, Robin had started playing the sport here and was playing high school volleyball at John F. Ross CVI when her mother left the U of G’s athletic department to join the athletic department at Queen’s University in Kingston. Linda’s now its executive director, the term Queen’s uses for athletic director.
“I don't think I've been back since I left. I don't remember the last time I came here,” Robin said. “The drive in, I recognized all of Aberfoyle.
“We stopped at a grocery store and my high school best friend lived across the street from it so it was a place I'd gone to all the time.”
Robin is in her first season with the Varsity Blues and also her first season playing in the OUA league. She had been a member of the Ottawa Gee-Gees for four seasons – only three counted towards her eligibility because of the pandemic – and joined the Varsity Blues after a year as an assistant coach with the Lakehead University Thunderwolves.
While she didn’t play at Lakehead, Ottawa is an OUA school, but plays in the Quebec league.
Robin doesn’t see too much difference between play in the two leagues.
“Really, it's mostly the age gap between the players just because in the Quebec league they have CEGEP so those girls really kind of develop those extra two years,” she said.
CEGEP is basically community college in Quebec, but students are required to spend two years at a CEGEP school before moving on to university.
“Mostly, it's very similar across the board in terms of playing,” Robin said. “What's really nice is the different variety of teams in the OUA. The Quebec league is very small so you play the same teams over and over again and I really like with the OUA having to play a bunch of different competitors.”
Not surprisingly, Robin started competing in volleyball mainly due to her mother who was head coach of the Gryphon women for a decade from the 1994-95 season until the 2004-05 season when she settled into an administrative role within the U of G athletics department.
“Originally, I think I was seven or eight and my sister (Kory) was going to go play for a 13U team and they didn't have enough girls for the team so my mom put me on the roster so there was enough people to even make a team for the Guelph Grizzlies at the time (now the Guelph Junior Gryphons),” Robin said. “That's how I actually started playing. I played two years up for my whole career until about 16U when those girls graduated. Then I just played my one year.”
And the good thing about volleyball?
“It's the tactics,” Robin answered. “As a setter, it’s about knowing who to set when, who's hot and who's ready to go for the kill. It's just kind of like being deceptive. I like to dump and I like to still kind of swing and be part of that play, too, which is a lot of fun. I really think volleyball is just a great overall sport for people to get involved in.”
Volleyball’s also a very momentum-driven sport and players do have to deal with the times when momentum is not their friend.
“Honestly, taking a deep breath and knowing that if you stick to the system, if you stick to the game plan that you've put in place, results will come,” Robin said of how to handle the times when momentum has settled on the other side of the net. “You believe in your teammates and you believe in what you've been working on over and over and over again in practice. When you start to change things, that's when you feel that momentum starting to shift away. Especially for our team it's sticking together and sticking to the game plan that we've all studied and worked on every day.”
For Robin, volleyball is her sport and she’s tried very few others.
“I've been a volleyball girl kind of through and through,” she said. “I threw the javelin in high school and I played one year of basketball and it was not for me. I tried my best, but it definitely was not a thing. I've really only played volleyball.”
Generously listed as 5-foot-8, Robin does help out in the blocking schemes of the Varsity Blues, although her main role as setter is to put teammates in successful
attacking positions.
“I really spent a lot of time in my younger years doing a lot of weight training, too, just to help myself knowing that I was going to end up being a shorter player in university,” she said. “Having a decent vertical was very important for me, even for the purpose of going at the secondary level, too.”
At the University of Toronto, Robin is pursuing a masters of teaching, high school level, English and geography.
“It's going super well,” she said. “I got placed in a classroom right away for Grade 9 and two Grade 11 classrooms that I taught for a couple of weeks, so for about two months. I really feel like I'm learning a lot to become an actual educator in the future.”
She started to contemplate teaching as a career while in high school in Guelph.
“A teacher that really inspired me – I was in CELP, the Community Environmental Leadership Program that ran here for a bunch of years and Joel Barr was the head teacher at the time. He really inspired me to become an educator just the way that he taught really made me want to make a change in terms of environmental issues. That's why I got into geography in the first place as a teachable, too.”
Conveniently, Robin’s course is two years in duration so she does have plans to return next season for her fifth and final year of eligibility. After that she’ll still be found playing the sport, just not as competitively.
“You'll catch me in an adult rec league,” she said. “I'm going to be having so much fun doing that. I think I really want to focus on my schooling and getting started as a teacher and probably moving on to getting another masters in geography or moving on to a PHD in education.”
And when she does start her teaching career on a full-time basis, she will start coaching there.
“Yes, absolutely,” she said. “The last place I was at I was volunteering to help coach the two girls' teams that they have running for the junior and senior teams. I definitely see myself involved in the volleyball community.”
Robin will get another trip to Guelph next week as the Varsity Blues and Gryphons are to meet again Jan. 19 at the GGAC. Game time is 6 p.m.
