Senior Bisons setter Alex Witt has been around high-level volleyball for pretty much his entire life. Both of his parents played the sport, with his mom suiting up for Trinity Western as a setter, and his dad earning provincial MVP honours in his grade 12 year as a left side.
 
"It was always very central. That became our world. My sister played volleyball, my older brother played volleyball and football and other sports. I had my older brother to look up to," said the BC native.
 
"My dad was the big influence in pushing myself to become the best volleyball player that I could. He ended up coaching me my grade 10 and 11 year as an assistant coach, and then as a head coach in school. His influence on me was as huge as any son has to a father. "
 
Raised as a man of faith, the values that Witt's parents both taught him, based on their experiences on and off the court, have carried with him for his entire life.
 
"My grandpa was born in Germany. They were one of the first families to move over to Canada as a refugee family from Germany after the second World War. My dad grew up in a trailer in an orchard. They would just do whatever they could to make ends meet. My dad has three brothers. My family doesn't come from wealth, and so my dad instilled in me the values that my grandpa had to instill in him to survive," Witt recalled.
 
"My dad has been successful in his businesses and in his life because of that, because of his work ethic and his faith and his trust in God's plan in his life. My mom coming into that picture, she's the kindest woman and shows the most empathy to people and cares so much."
 
As an athlete, the 6'1" Witt grew up in the gym, often going to his brother's practices and watching his dad coach. Through his many experiences as a kid, he developed an extremely high IQ for the sport of volleyball, which naturally led him to becoming a setter.
 
"I just really enjoy the mental side of it. You also get to control the game a lot more, you get to control the pace of it, the offence, how things run. As I've grown as an athlete I've learned that the setting position is not just setting the pace of the offence but also setting the tone emotionally for your team. As I moved into college and university I've really tried to absorb and integrate that into my game."
 
 
'Who am I outside of this sport?'
Witt's journey to leadership as a student-athlete at the university level has come with plenty of learning experiences.
 
As a competitor, he naturally wanted to be the best at his position, but early in his post-secondary career at Columbia Bible College in the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association, that became an unhealthy vice.
 
"I had plenty of coaches tell me that I wouldn't be a university level setter, or not really have a belief. Those things stick with you. If you let it drive you, it can drive you insane. If that's all that you care about, then you're going to go crazy."
 
A great example of Witt's statement came at CBC, where he was teammates with a guy who had earned the starting setter position ahead of him on the provincial team previously. Witt, instead, played libero.
 
That experience stuck with Witt. His whole first semester he was "obsessed with being better than that guy, and proving I was better than him." The peak of Witt's obsession came in the last game of the fall semester against Vancouver Island University, where he lost total focus, costing his team a potential win.
 
"I think I'm better than him, and my ego is through the roof. I'm spending hours and hours on top of practice days in the gym practicing on my own with one other teammate, just to be better than this guy. I didn't have anything personal against him, I just wanted to be better. It was so taxing. We were in that game, I wasn't starting. We went to five sets, and that whole game I had tunnel vision and I was just watching him," he mentioned.
 
"I could only see his play and the errors he was making. I ended up getting double subbed in in the fifth set. I missed my serve into the middle of the net because I was not prepared and not paying attention to the game. I didn't even know what the scores were in the first four sets. I walked in, I made a bad serve, and three or four bad sets. We were up by a point when I went in and we lost by like five points and I was on the court when that happened."
 
Witt described the game as his "come to Jesus moment."
 
In the days and months afterwards, he leaned on his faith, and the values his parents had taught him about "work ethic and compassion and empathy and how to stay humble while you're pursuing greatness."
 
"I really valued that," he added.
 
"Who am I outside of this sport? It was a knife to the heart. I couldn't even comprehend that I could be such a bad teammate, just because I was being so prideful and arrogant in thinking that I deserved to be on the court. I had a really big reflection period after that through the Christmas break to re-set my expectations and surrendering the outcome to God."
 
Witt came back in the winter term with a relentless commitment to his teammates and coaches, specifically his interpersonal relationships with them. He embraced being a servant leader, and as he fell in love with that process, the results came with it.
 
In 2021-22, he was awarded the Pride, Hustle and Desire Award, which was a peer voted hardest worker award. The following year he recorded a personal best 426 assists along with 86 digs and 17 aces.
 
"It was a two-year process of really trying to shift that thinking and changing how I viewed the sport and my relationship to it. When you're in that environment it's really cool because everything is pointing back to God. That was a good environment for me to be in to have that mental shift."


 
'You have to put your ego at the door'
In 2023-24, Witt made the move to the Bisons, where he had the opportunity to embrace all the values of being a good teammate, and leader, applying the lessons learned at Columbia Bible College.
 
Sammy Ludwig, a 6'6" MHSAA 3A and Overall Male Athlete of the Year was already on the roster, and Witt was totally okay backing him up, supporting him and the rest of the team in whatever capacity was needed.
 
"I knew walking in that I was going to be the backup to start. You look at Sammy's ability, I have nothing but good things to say about him. He's a great guy in the team room. He's a great athlete. He works hard. He's extremely physically gifted. He's extremely talented. And he's been in the sport a long time. He's a very smart player, a very good player. He played for the U21 national team and he's on our team. He's just a quality guy and I'm privileged to call him a friend," said Witt.
 
"We all want to be on the court. We all want to play. But you have to ask the question – do you just want to be better than that guy? Or do you want to be the best version of yourself? If you're pursuing anything and you're only looking at the guy just in front of you, you're shorting yourself on the opportunity to be better."
 
Doing the little things, and continuing to work hard, helped Witt earn an increased role last season. He and Ludwig shared time, combining for 640 assists and 98 sets played, and the dynamic duo have both seen the floor already in 2025-26.
 
Witt understands that they bring different skill sets to the table, and in certain situations, that means that he'll be coming off the bench and in others, he'll be starting matches, like he did last weekend.
 
"My goal is to be right there for [Ludwig], and try to give him info from what I've been seeing with a team's defence and how we can score. You have to put your ego at the door. For any athlete on any team, putting that in check is going to be your greatest asset as far as being a good teammate and being a leader as well," he noted.
 
"I've been blessed to be chosen as a captain on this team and I take that with a lot of pride. I really want to treat that with the respect that it deserves and set that example and help other people become the best version of themselves. It's not my decision whether I'm on the court, but it's my decision how I act."
 
The setter dynamic is a microcosm of Manitoba's extremely deep roster overall. Ten players saw the floor in the opening weekend of play against UBCO, and last year 13 different student-athletes played at least three sets, all of whom are back.
 
"Our team is very much of the mindset of next man up. If you have a guy in the wings who could play better or who has an advantage, then yeah we're going to use it. Sammy is 6'6". He touches 11'7" or 11'8". I can't touch that. I'm almost six inches shorter than he is. That's the reality. His net presence is better than mine. There's no doubt about that. His ability to block the ball, his ability to be a force at the net is huge, and his offensive ability is also huge. He plays big. His presence at the net is large. He's going to get more roof blocks than me," Witt admitted.
 
"My advantage is that I'm small and fast. My goal is to get to every ball. It doesn't matter the quality of the pass, I need to better that ball for my teammate so that they can have a better opportunity to kill the ball. I'm small, I'm fast and I can get to the ball and set the ball even in tougher situations. Sometimes you might be out of system running a high ball offence, and sometimes I can turn those situations into in system plays where I can still make their blockers late and give us some space."
 
Witt added that "we have a great team with a lot of depth and we're trying to use the depth that we have." That was clear against UBCO, with seven different players tallying at least eight kills.
 
"By the end of the game we had three or four different outsides, which is huge. It's great that we can rely on that many guys."