The E.S. Macdonald-Cartier pipeline of elite volleyball talent is starting to gain momentum.

In the same fall season that sees perennial provincial team attacker Olivier Tremblay heading to McMaster University to start his U Sports career at the home of a program that captured 12 of the 18 OUA banners that were contested between 2008 and 2026, Miguel Gauthier steps in to fill the void at the home of the Panthères.

Gauthier will do so fresh off his first appearance with the national team program, part of the silver medal Canadian team that returned from the Copa Panamerica Boys U17 Championship in Guatamala City earlier this month.

“The volleyball was so different, a completely different level,” said Gauthier, the youngest of three boys in the family. “The skill and style was so different.”

A grade 11 student at Ecole secondaire Macdonald-Cartier, Gauthier can truly only draw on four years of experience in the sport, his love of hockey taking center stage prior to trying out with the school volleyball team in grade seven.

A height increase that truly kicked in during grades eight and nine were just part of the rapid rise of the now 6’3” left side hitter who returns to the Northern Chill Volleyball Club for his fifth year this winter as well.

“My first year of volleyball, I wasn’t the greatest, obviously,” said Gauthier. “In eighth grade, I started to step it up a little bit. I gradually, consistently grew, so while there was some adjustment to be made, it was nothing major.”

In fact, the biggest step forward would come when he decided to attend an OVA (Ontario Volleyball Association) Ontario Regional Program camp in 2025, selected, to his surprise, to an all-star team that would compete at the Canada Cup. It paved the way not only to the incredible few months he experienced this year, but also to a better understanding of what was needed in order for Gauthier to carve out a role amongst the cream of the crop.

“In seventh and eighth grade, it was the attacking (skills) that made you stand out more – but as you get to provincial level, everybody hits like you,” said Gauthier. “The defensive and passing aspect (of my game) has been my biggest advantage.”

But it wasn’t just his physical skills that needed honing to feel at home in an environment that draws the attention of coaches and scouts and such at a national level. “Everybody there just treats the sport so differently,” said the northern Ontario product. “There is so much preparation that goes into every single game.”

“And the game is so much faster. You have to be alert the entire time.”

There are a multitude of reasons why the regional program / provincial team / national team trajectory has turned the volleyball world of Miguel Gauthier on its head. Consider that the young man who truly enjoys playing the left-side actually cracked the Ontario roster last summer as a middle.

“I had to work a lot on my reception (serve receive) to become that left-side,” said Gauthier, who highlighted the efforts of local coaches Dale Beausoleil and Richard Faucher as being a big part of the process that allowed him to hit the court at power (the in-house volleyball term for the position of left-side hitter) the second time around.

Thankfully, the training at middle was not at all wasted.

“At middle, I had to work on moving laterally really fast to get to that ball,” said Gauthier. “I still have to move really fast to my right as a left-side blocker. It’s still a skill I can use. And as a middle, your primary focus is reading the middle on the opposite side. As a left-side now, I know what a middle’s tendencies are, which is an advantage.”

The truth is that the gap between those named to Team Canada (U18) and those who fall just short often lies in details so much as to escape all but those who live and breathe volleyball – folks like coaches Beausoleil and Faucher.

“They are really big on pre-serve preparation,” said Gauthier. “They have a pre-step (some people call it a split step) that gets you ready to move in any direction in serve receive. That was something I had never really done and now it’s muscle memory.”

There was more refinement to come, fine-tuning his platform to a precision-like exactitude courtesy of the teachings of one of the Volleyball Canada coaches. “They really appreciated my very professional approach, that I took it all seriously.”

Though his mid-summer trek to Central America might not come anywhere close to a lovely vacation to the islands, Gauthier, for his part, was thrilled with the takeaways. “I wasn’t a starter, but when I got on (the court), I did my job,” he said. “When I played, I thought I did pretty well.”

“Now, my goals as a player have changed a lot. I still want to win, obviously, but it’s also about how I get better.”