By Howard Tsumura/Special to the Langley Advance
The giant video screen that introduces the starting lineup of the Trinity Western Spartans men’s volleyball team before home games at the Langley Events Centre affords each player a handful of seconds to sum up what’s most distinct about their persona.
That’s no easy task when you’re cut from a bolt of cloth as unique as Ryan Sclater’s. Yet, when the visage of the 6-foot-7 outside hitter appears on the screen, he sends a message as clear as the match-winning kills he delivers as the most dynamic attacking player in the country.
In the video clip, Sclater, dressed in his TWU jersey, is intently reading a book when a volleyball is passed to him from off-screen. Without breaking concentration, he pushes the ball away and continues reading.
“It’s supposed to be a bit of fun thing,” the fifth-year senior said with a laugh. “But it’s also a kind of statement that what’s important to me is not just volleyball.”
On Friday at 7 p.m., Sclater takes to the court with the rest of the undefeated (10-0), No. 1-ranked, defending national champion Spartans as they open the second half of the Canada West conference season by entertaining the No. 10 Saskatchewan Huskies (6-4) in the first match of a weekend series that wraps up Saturday, Jan. 8 at the LEC. That game is also at 7 p.m.
In his final university season, the 2012 member of The Province’s Head of the Class is leading the conference in kills-per-set at 4.31 and leading the nation in total kills with 155.
They’re the kind of numbers that suggest a 24/7 sports mentality, but as his video clip succinctly shows, the full university experience has always been about a much bigger picture.
And so, while his teammates may spend their downtime glued to a TV watching sports, it’s not uncommon to see Sclater, a 22-year-old married English major, seated in a nearby chair studying the works of poets Geoffrey Chaucer and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
It’s a contrast so great from the typical student athlete that Spartans head coach Ben Josephson once jokingly quipped on the school’s website: “I feel like he might have arrived on Earth in some kind of canister from some faraway planet.”
Sclater has always challenged conventionality, especially in the athletic arena.
He attended Port Coquitlam’s Terry Fox Secondary. The school didn’t have a boys volleyball team but he was proficient at the sport with his local club team and decided to give it all of his focus in university. This after leading the basketball team to a provincial title and subsequently being named the tournament’s most valuable player.
In the academic arena, he devours knowledge like a national title is at stake.
“Ryan would be insulted if you called him a student athlete,” said Josephson. “He’s a student who likes to play sports. It’s such a rare thing, because he has such a passion for learning, but once you put him in a competitive team environment, he’s as special and as gifted as anyone we’ve had.”
While he’s anxious to start a pro volleyball career overseas after graduation, there’s no question that Sclater’s bags will always be packed with books. He’s just finished one by Canadian philosopher George Grant entitled, Technology and Justice, which he says, “raises very interesting questions about what we’re doing in the modern world.”
And he awoke Christmas morning to a large cache of new titles that he’s already begun to devour.
“For every book you read, the entire tradition of literature just keeps expanding and I really love that my preconceptions can constantly be challenged,” said Sclater. “When you read the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a late-19th century British poet, you feel like you’re stepping into another world in terms of his faith, his society and his class distinction. You really get a sense of how disconnected we are today. Volleyball can have its ups and downs, so it’s nice to have the constant of reading and learning.”
Sclater graduated from high school with a near-perfect grade point average and has been named an academic all-Canadian in each of his first four seasons with the Spartans.
“And when he gets it this year, it’s going to be five, and we’ve never had that before,” said Josephson.
“Usually, when you see someone who in many ways is very different from the rest of the group, it can be a negative because they seem isolated and not connected. But Ryan has so much character that he connects on such a deep level.
“He’s able to walk that fine line of harvesting his own passion to be a deep thinker, but still remain one of the boys in a core band of brothers.”
– Howard Tsumura is a writer with the Vancouver Province.
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PHOTO: Ryan Sclater and his TWU teammates take on Saskatchewan in games Friday and Saturday evening. (Trinity Western University photo)