For the first time in over ten years, the Bison men's volleyball roster will feature an international player in Australia native Ben Carleton. The 18-year-old left side hitter is expected to make an immediate impact on a young, but talented Manitoba team.

Carleton was a gifted volleyball and basketball player in middle school, but decided to put his full focus on volleyball starting in grade ten.

"I just thought I could go further in volleyball and generally I just enjoy it more," he says." I enjoy everyone who plays volleyball, it's a really tight-knit community and that's one thing I really like about it."

The native of Brisbane has had plenty of career highlights. One of his biggest accomplishments was being named to the Volleyball Australia Centre of Excellence program, which is comprised of the best youth players in the country. He spent two-and-a-half years away from home, training full time with the program which is based in Canberra, roughly 12 hours from his home city.

"Moving away from home was nerve-wracking but also exciting at the same time," he says. "It was probably the biggest step towards where I am now."

Carleton also represented Australia at the U20 Men's Asian Volleyball Championship in Bahrain this past July, going up against the likes of China and South Korea.

"It was just a really good experience, especially facing Bahrain and their home crowd," he says of the championship exposure. "There was probably about 3,000 people all whistling and you couldn't even hear the ref blow the whistle. It was a really good atmosphere and something I love about volleyball."

While Carleton gained plenty of exposure representing his home country, he also knew that in order to take his volleyball career to the next level, he'd have to head overseas. This is due to the fact that in Australia, university volleyball teams only have one competition a year instead of a full-time schedule.

"One of the pathways for us is to go to Canada," Carleton says.

"Some people go to America but they're not necessarily looking for international players. I started looking in Canada and obviously I wanted to go to the top university level, so the range of Manitoba, UBC and all that."

Carleton says there's about 25 Australians currently playing volleyball in Canada for various universities. This has come as no shock to men's volleyball head coach Garth Pischke, who says that everybody has started to open their doors to foreign players, himself included. Pischke is close with Australian Men's National team head coach Mark Lebedew, who directed him to the junior national team head coach, and ultimately to Carleton.

"Obviously I had a lot of meetings with my head coach and he recommended Garth to me," Carleton says.

"I was sort of looking at different teams and universities to see what I was wanting to do. After the recommendation from my coach, I sort of looked into it and chatted a bit to Garth through email. I liked what I heard and did a bit more research into the university, because that's a big part of coming here, and I liked what I saw."

By the end of August, Carleton was on a plane to Manitoba, where he was warmly greeted by his new Bison teammates.

"When I arrived here, two of the guys [Dustin Spiring and Kevin Negus] came and picked me up from the airport," he says.

"We spent the whole day together, met a few other people and then got into training straight away. Not an official one with Garth, but sort of just with the guys. It was really good to meet everyone. I was excited, because I could see how good they were."

Carleton has already seen court time in Manitoba's first two pre-season tournaments, and Pischke is excited to see how he develops as the years go along.

"He's got some serious potential," the head coach says.

"He's got a long ways to go, we keep forgetting that he's only 18 years old, but he did play all summer with [Australia's] junior national team and we're seeing some improvement already in his thought process. He's got some things to learn about the game, but he's got the talent to be one of the best players in this league for sure."