By Wally Donaldson
The Oshawa Express

There is outside the back window of Gord Williamson’s immaculate residence in Seagrave a challenging King’s Bay nine-hole golf course.
Ironically, two sets of golf clubs hang inside his basement by the sliding doors and behind a slate pool table, a host of fishing rods and related equipment grace the walls.
After a colorful 23-year career of coaching volleyball on college and secondary school levels, Williamson is stepping away from the hardcourt to dedicate more time to swinging a club on the fairways and casting a rod inside a fishing boat.
No more meetings.
No more recruiting.
Just pure relaxation.

And yet, even though there has always been the enjoyment of golfing and fishing in leisurely times, Williamson has never had a greater passion for any sport more than volleyball. His impressive record as a coach speaks for itself.
From his early coaching years at George Vanier Collegiate in Toronto to his final location at Oshawa’s Durham College, Williamson has personified success with clipboard in hand, achieving an overall Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (OCAA) record of 222-100 in 13 seasons with the Lords.
His stay at the Durham school makes Williamson the longest serving skipper of the men’s volleyball program since its inception.
He previously coached women’s volleyball for 10 seasons at Seneca College in Toronto, claiming six provincial titles, along with tutoring the high school boys program at Whitby’s Anderson Collegiate.
And although Williamson had been on a mission these years on a highly competitive level, he did set out a program at the college as to the duration he would be overseeing the keen talent he had before him.
“It wasn’t a snap decision to step away from the program at Durham,” notes Williamson. “I had a chat with Ken (Babcock, athletic director) two years ago and suggested that I would be giving it two more (years).”
The Lords came up shy of expectations at the recent OCAA championship in Ancaster. They got off to a banner start with a 3-1 victory in quarter-final play over second-seeded Nipissing Lakers, but were relegated to the bronze medal round after taking a three-set beating at the hands of the Humber Hawks.
Their fortune did not improve in the bronze matchup, losing 3-1 in sets to the Mohawk Mountaineers.
Although he did manage to mould a viable contender based on an impressive regular-season record, his inability to complement college athletes with students at the adjoining University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) these past four fiscal years presented a special challenge.

“It really hasn’t been a level playing field because of the size of other schools,” Williamson points out. “Almost every other college in the province has university students. About a third of the athletes at Humber are Guelph students.
“Georgian College has Laurentian students and Fanshawe has Western. It was a mammoth challenge when we did lose UOIT kids. It has taken up to this year to get back to the provincials.”Lords lost to Mohawk in the OCAA gold medal game four years ago. Four starters were UOIT students at that point. “It was a luxury to have kids around for four, maybe five years to build on. College today is two or three years and so it has been tough to haul,” says Williamson.
“It’s especially tough when you’re a school of 6,000 competing against schools like Humber with 20,000. Seneca has probably the same (numbers) and they have the advantage of drawing university students as well.”
Reasons as to why UOIT students are ineligible to compete in a Lords uniform are unclear. However, recruiting for keen volleyball athletes has been challenging. Best example was a promising Trent University athlete who wanted to attend UOIT and play on a college level with the Lords. Once told by Williamson it wasn’t possible, the student opted for another direction.
But whatever the deficit situation Williamson felt he may have encountered during his tenure at Durham College, he was also blessed with a solid organization on an executive level and top-notch athletes, which included All-Canadians Nat Ovesnek in 2000, Rob Guenette in 2002 and Adam Schiedel in 2005.
This crop of current athletes, in its third year of a building program, was to make a serious dent on an OCAA level this campaign. “The guys did come a long way even though it was disappointing what happened at the provincials. I really thought we should have been top three. For a number of reasons, it didn’t happen. One of the toughest things about coaching is trying to figure out what happened when everything is said and done.”
Williamson experienced good success during his tenure at Seneca College on the women’s side and adds with a huge grin, “I got spoiled my first year there when we won the provincials. They were a group of athletes that didn’t know when to quit.”
His success with top four finishes in three Ontario Federation Secondary Athletic Association (OFSAA) seasons as head skipper of the Anderson Raiders parlayed to the college ranks.
“When I first took over at Durham, we didn’t necessarily have a talented team, but the boys were focused. It was tough for us in the win-loss column, bit I wanted us to be in the best shape of any team in this league and they bought into it,” adds Williamson.
His commitment to the sport landed Williamson a 2000 Canadian Colleges Athletic Association (CCAA) Coaching Excellence Award, selected by his coaching peers to become only the third Ontario coach to win this national honor.
Not bad for a guy who never did play the game, at least on a competitive level.
“Yah, I confess,” he laughs. “When I went to high school (in Port Perry), I don’t think we had a volleyball team. We had football, basketball and track and field and I did compete in those. I ran track at Western and got hooked on the game when I played inter-faculty there. That was the extent of it.”
Williamson has since turned to refereeing high school volleyball in the Kawartha District for the simple purpose of quenching his thirst for the sport.
“The reason why volleyball is so intriguing, so tough to play and coach, is because for one you have to be a really good athlete and secondly, the game is so fast. The speed of the ball, especially on the men’s level, is incredible and unlike any other sport, you can’t slow it down,” laments Williamson.
“If you are a basketball player and you want to slow the pace, you hang on to the ball. In volleyball, it’s bouncing all the time and things happen so fast. The athletic aspect is so critical and that transfers itself to the mental and emotional side of the game.
“Even from the sidelines as a coach, the mental aspect is really taxing.”