Mike Margarit has a passion, a dream of establishing an elite female youth volleyball club. That dream just needed a little test drive.
More than a decade ago, Margarit combined forces with Eric Laberge, creating the Azzuri Volleyball Club. This initial foray lasted three years, derailed by a volunteer manpower base simply stretched too thin.
"The one promise I made to myself is that if I ever got it started again, I was going to do it radically different and make sure to keep the infrastructure right, in terms of human resources and finances," said Margarit.
A mainstay at the side of ultra-successful Cambrian women's volleyball coach Dale Beausoleil since before the turn of the millenium, Margarit re-loaded in 2005.
The Northern Chill Volleyball Club hit the court, that first year, with three youth teams as well as a women's squad comprised primarily of graduates of the Golden Shield OCAA program.
Eight years later, the Chill family is a mainstay within the Sudbury sports scene, providing a valuable training ground for future post-secondary athletes and garnering plenty of hardware along the way.
"In those early years, we had some parents really step up," stated Margarit. "We've been really fortunate that we have had a lot of parents that are here for the right reasons."
Right out of the gate, Margarit, and those he surrounded himself with, understood that the sport of volleyball was only part of the equation if the club was to reach the heights to which they aspired.
"We bill ourselves as an elite volleyball club, but I think we also try to provide a certain social and moral growth and development for the athletes," Margarit said. "We try and provide a positive life experience, highlighted by a volleyball experience."
Although attaining perfection in this area might be a goal not grounded in reality, the return-rate of the young ladies under their tutelage would suggest the Northern Chill are doing many things right.
And while no one is suggesting that winning at all costs be adopted as the club mantra, this is still competitive volleyball on a provincial scale. "I think we are always going to be results-based, to a certain degree," acknowledged Margarit.
"That's just the nature of sport. I don't know that we are necessarily more geared to the results now, but there's a greater expectation now," he added. Indeed, the Northern Chill have grown over the past eight years, both on the court and off.
"The roll out to the season, administratively, is so much easier now, just simply because we have been through the routine," Margarit said. "Each year, you have to treat it as a learning experience."
"I think we've done a pretty good job of improving the club every year." Stagnation is not an option. There are far too many new mountains to be scale, new lands to be conquered.
"We would like to definitely operate a U13 team on a consistent basis," said Margarit. For the past few years, the Chill have fielded teams in every age classification ranging from U14 to U18, with each team participating in approximately three OVA (Ontario Volleyball Association) tournaments in addition to provincials.
And there are whispers, almost annually, of expanding the Chill network to include a boys component. The work for the likes of Margarit, Craig Thomson, Eric Bacon, Joanna Castonguay and countless others is not yet done.
Yet the vision, as Margarit first imagined it, is pretty darn close. More than enough to keep him happy for the time being.
