In advance of the 2020 U SPORTS Men's Volleyball Championship, hosted by the University of Manitoba from March 13-15, 2020, we'll be shining the spotlight on alumni from the program, profiling their career and catching up on where they're at now.

Throughout his storied Bisons career that included two national championships, two First-Team All-Canadian nods and a Player of the Year award, setter Scott Koskie was well known for his team-first attitude.

"He never seemed to be an individual type of guy. He was always 'whatever is good for the team, coach. I'm here to help you out and to support you and do what I can,'" noted Bisons head coach Garth Pischke, who coached Koskie from 1989-95 as well as later on with Team Canada.

"There were times where he wasn't playing, but I never once thought that he was there for any type of selfish reasons. That made it really easy for him to play in the position that he was in, because his goal was always to make the other guys look good and feel good. He would joke with them and he would congratulate them and everybody liked him because of that fact."

Koskie's ability to relate to his teammates and build lasting relationships was a big reason why he chose to be a setter in the first place.

"What I liked most about [being a setter] was I got to connect with each of the different positions and learn a bit about each," he says.

"I could see the game from what I wanted to do, but then I had to see the game from the perspective of the middle and the outside and the opposite. I think that's what I liked the most about it. Then when you figured out how to make other people successful, to me that was really rewarding and helped me develop a lot of cool relationships."

Koskie's debut with Manitoba in 1989-90 came at an interesting time.

The team still had 6'7" setter Dale Iwanoczko — the program's all-time leader in digs (1559, old school scoring) — for two more seasons, so Koskie ended up redshirting his first year and was Iwanoczko's backup in his second.

"[Iwanoczko] didn't really say that much, but he just did a lot. Everybody else kind of fell into line," added Koskie.

"It was cool to come in at that time where the majority of the players were Manitoba guys and a lot of those guys were among the best in the country at their position and the team was among the best in the country at what they did. It just set the bar so high and you just kind of followed along."

Despite not seeing regular playing time until his third year with the squad, Koskie kept up with the pace of his elders — who were a constant presence at nationals year after year — by giving them a competitive look at practice.

"The guys that aren't getting playing time, it's very important that they work extremely hard, because it's forcing the best guys to work hard every day," Pischke commented.

"They walk in the gym and they see this young kid just giving it everything and they're going geez, that guy's not even playing, but he's working hard. I guess I better push myself too. It really rubs off on everybody else and Scott for sure was great at that. The guys that were starting benefitted from it and what he did rubbed off on other guys down the road to keep that tradition going."

A key moment in Koskie's Bisons career came in that first season in 1989-90, as he was able to attend the All-Canadian banquet due to Winnipeg being the host city. The Bisons also advanced all the way to the national final, losing in three sets to a Laval squad that they developed a stellar rivalry with over the years.

"Because it was in Winnipeg, Garth took everybody, even the redshirt guys [to the banquet]," he says.

"I remember as a first-year guy watching all these other guys go up to get awards. At that time, you couldn't watch any volleyball, it was back pre-internet so you heard of these guys, but you never really saw them. That was so valuable for me to sit in that banquet room and watch all the best guys from Calgary and Laval and Manitoba go up. To see that these were Manitoba guys for the most part who were right at that level and to see what was possible was probably the most interesting part."

The following year, Manitoba won it all, topping Toronto 3-0. It was a memorable send-off for roster members such as Iwanoczko, who ended his university career in style.

"It was really cool just to see how those guys handled themselves, coming back from disappointment to right to the top and how guys that were already All-Canadian level got better, because you had to get better to win," remarked Koskie.

"That one was really exciting, even though I had zero to do with it. That's a bit of a credit to what Garth was able to build within the group. That sort of competitiveness where everybody sort of felt like a part of it, even though there were like six or seven guys who did all the work."

Four years later, it was Koskie — the Player of the Year — who was on the other end of things, winning a national title in his last season with the program after falling to Laval in three the year before.

"We always knew that when we were going to play Laval, it didn't matter who you had beaten before and where you were at or how good you were. They didn't care how good you were, they thought that they were going to win," recalled Koskie.

"I remember that that game was the same thing. We knew it was going to be a battle. It kind of went back and forth. There was moment when we got down early in the fifth set, and I can't remember exactly what the score was but I think we were down by three or four. I remember we were having a conversation in one of the timeouts and we said hey listen, we've worked too hard to get worried about the result, so let's just keep working and see what happens.

Everybody knew that we had come up short the year before and the year before that we were ranked number one and lost in the semi. Those things kind of creep in, but I remember as a group we said let's just work. That's what got us here. We got back to work and then a couple of things went our way."

One of the things that went Manitoba's way in the fifth set was a call against a Laval player who was two feet out of rotation, a memory that Pischke will likely never forget.

"They had a guy who was out of rotation the whole match, and I was just on the umpire for the first four sets. He just kept looking at me and not doing anything. So finally, in the fifth set I just forgot about it. He's not going to call it and probably shouldn't call it now.

Eventually I think it was 13-12 in the fifth set and he called it. I looked at my assistant at the time and went are you kidding me, he's going to call that now? We got the ball and won 15-12 I think it was. It was a pretty crazy and emotional time."

Following his time with the Bisons, Koskie enjoyed a storied international career that included 13 years with Canada's men's national team – six as captain – and ten years playing professionally throughout Europe.

He had the pleasure of having Pischke as his head coach for five of those seasons, where the bench boss helped Canada improve their world ranking from 21st to tenth.

Among the highlights were a victory on home soil against powerhouse Brazil in Canada's recent return to the world league in 1999, as well as a bronze medal finish in the Pan Am Games in the same year, which was hosted by Winnipeg. 

"When we made that transition first from here to the national team, we came from a program where for the whole time that I was here – and the guys before that and some of the guys afterwards too – the expectation was already there that you can take the court and you can look anybody in the eye and know you were probably better than them. If you weren't better than them then you were probably going to be better than them by the end," Koskie says.

"When [Pischke] got involved with the national team we had so many guys that were just kind of coming into their prime, and that was one of the most important things that he added to it was that ability to now take the floor and stare at the guys on the other side and say let's see where we are. We were able to beat Brazil and we beat Yugoslavia at the time and we beat the Americans. A lot of that is just having that belief when you're on the court that it's not going to go your way at the end. It might, but it could just as easily go our way."

Koskie's love for volleyball hasn't diminished whatsoever. At age 48 he's still playing tier one volleyball. He's also the Provincial High Performance Coach for Volleyball Manitoba and is involved with all levels of the sport.

"That's a result of what Garth put into us, that we still love the game, kind of like how he's still doing it because he still loves the game. That hasn't wavered.

"I sat in with him for video the other day for the UBC game and he's still got the same fire and the same passion and the same mannerisms that he had when he was with the national team and even before that when I was here 25 years ago. That's carried into a lot of the guys."