St. Lawrence College (SLC) announced on Tuesday that as of fall 2025-26, the school will have a varsity volleyball team competing in the Ontario Colleges Athletics Association (OCAA).
SLC has had a club program running through the college and competing within a local volleyball league that began in 2012 and was restarted as restrictions around COVID were loosened.
The college is not a stranger to OCAA volleyball, but hasn’t competed with other Ontario colleges since the 1997-98 season, although SLC was unable to confirm exactly why the program was cut at that time.
Athletic Director Kevin Biggs says SLC has for a while been one of the only colleges in Ontario with a varsity basketball team but no volleyball program.
He says people have often been surprised to hear that SLC doesn’t compete in volleyball at the OCAAs, and it was time to rectify that.
“There’s lots of excitement out there, people are pretty happy that we’re finally joining volleyball,” Biggs said.
“That is the most common thing I hear from people, is that they’re shocked that there’s no volleyball program at St. Lawrence.”
The Athletic Director said he’s heard from peers and former colleagues at other schools who are glad to see the addition of SLC in the competition, especially schools like Loyalist College who add a new rival just a short drive away.
Biggs says the process of bringing SLC volleyball back to OCAA varsity competition has been a long one, and he gave the lion’s share of credit to volunteer coaches Socheath Keo and Ricky Cruz.
While the hard work of the coaches has been paramount to getting the program once again ready to shift from extramural competition back to OCAA competition, as identified as a goal over a decade ago, building interest in the program wasn’t a challenge and people in the area were hungry to get volleyball back.
“A lot of the success is because of their efforts and them putting the time in to develop these programs into an OCAA-ready varsity program,” Biggs said.
“We brought back the volleyball program coming out of COVID. It really picked up steam and momentum and popularity, we did next to no promotion or awareness on it… It was a waiting list of people to get in there and wanting to be a part of it.”
Biggs says a posting for the varsity head coaching roles, both men’s and women’s, will be shared in the coming days.
While Biggs implied it’s up to the two men who have been instrumental in revitalizing the program as to whether they’ll continue coaching the programs, he knows it’s a big time commitment but is hopeful that one way or the other they’ll be involved with the team in an assistant coaching capacity at least.
Biggs says most of the work to be done at the college, most notably scheduling practices and games around the varsity basketball teams, was already handled prior to the announcement, and students and faculty at SLC can expect to see a much busier gymnasium throughout the year.
For the time being, prospective members of the teams can contact Ricky Cruz at fc***@sl.ca .
