As the semester came to a close this past spring, USC students began to say goodbye to their friends, prepare for exams and head home for the summer.
The men’s club volleyball team, however, spent that time competing at the National Collegiate Volleyball Federation tournament where the team ultimately tied for third place with Georgia in the AAA division.
Fourth-year computer engineering student and club president Ryan Karbowniczak and the rest of the team representing South Carolina were competing in their first national tournament since 2019. Karbowniczak said the uniqueness of the tournament comes from the variety of teams that the club got to play.
“It's definitely a really unique experience, a lot of fun, get to meet people from all over the place, and just all types of levels of competition,” Karbowniczak said. “Some of the most fun volleyball you ever get to play is at nationals.”
The recent success of the club can be attributed to multiple factors. One way graduate data and communications student Xzavian Slaughter has seen the team's growth, in both skill and numbers, is in the recent addition of high school boys volleyball teams in the state of South Carolina.
“Now we're getting people coming from their schools locally that want to play the sport,” Slaughter said. “The fact that they had the precursor to learn indoor volleyball before they got here really does make us better.”
Even though as a graduate student, Slaughter can no longer become an official member of the club, he often attends practice to help out and coaches several teams around the area such as the Lake Murray Volleyball Club and the Providence Athletic Club.
Slaughter didn’t begin to play volleyball until his first semester at South Carolina. But as he began to participate more in the sport, one person who helped him become more accustomed to the game of volleyball was Director of Mass Spectrometry Services Michael Walla.
Walla serves as the team's faculty advisor, a position that not all club teams have, and has held this role since the club's inception. He attends various volleyball team practices. First, he helps out with the women's club volleyball team, then the men's team and he ends with an open gym session that is available to any USC student.
The open gym practices have a variety of players ranging from those who are practicing to make the club teams next season to students just looking to make friends.
Fourth-year mechanical engineering student Ethan Jaroszewski began attending these open gym sessions this year. Jaroszewski said he has enjoyed playing a sport that he is still learning. The camaraderie aspect of the sport is something that Jaroszewski has also enjoyed. He has used this open gym to meet some new friends after transferring to South Carolina.
“Being able to do a sport where, you can talk and communicate with people, make friends," Jaroszewski said. "My first couple friends here, I met them through this."
Jaroszewski and Slaughter are just a couple of examples of some of the benefits of coming to these large open practices to learn from a veteran of the game like Walla, and how it can help players become more comfortable with the game, Jaroszewski said.
The open gym sessions improved Slaughter's volleyball skills. Working with Walla and using the lessons he learned helped him improve, Slaughter says.
“He absolutely helped me through everything, but at the same time Mike (Walla) couldn’t express enough that at the end of the day I had to figure something out,” Slaughter said. “He could guide me from an outside view. A lot of it for me was personal problem solving.”
This ability to internally solve problems is something that Walla preaches to the players. This approach leads to success on the court, and teaches the club members valuable skills that will be useful outside of volleyball, Walla said.
“After this, there are a lot of jobs where you'll always have a boss, but you're also gonna be the boss. Or you're going to be apart of a group of other people, that's kind of important." Walla said.
But the club's main goal is for it members to have fun playing volleyball, but also develop valuable life skills like team building and how to get along with others, Walla said.
“There's more to it than the volleyball. There's the human aspect. We play volleyball because it's fun, and people who don't wanna play volleyball, usually don't stay with the group very long," Walla said. "People do make friends for life, we've had people in open gym get married."
The club will be looking to get back to nationals this season and will be in action this Saturday where they will be competing in an all-day tournament against many different teams including Furman University, East Carolina University and UNC Chapel Hill. The tournament will begin at 8:30 a.m. at Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center.