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By Austin Stanton
When Adam Simac was in high school, his goal was to get a baseball scholarship and pitch in the NCAA. Volleyball was something he did for fun. He didn’t play for a competitive club, just his high school team.
Now, 14 years after graduating from Sir Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School, the 8-year veteran of the Canadian men’s national volleyball team is calling it a career.
“I could never get my long arms to cooperate with the rest of my body when I was pitching,” reflects the 6’ 8” one-time Orleans Little Leaguer.
Simac got serious about volleyball in 2002, the spring of his Grade 12 year. He caught the eye of Queen’s University coach Brenda Willis at a high school tournament in Kingston earlier that year.
“I saw a big strong guy, 6’ 8”, with hands the size of dinner plates,” recalls Willis. “He moved well along the net and didn’t look like he understood the game, but he had the tools you can’t teach.”
Willis was able to get Simac into the commerce program on a part-time basis, taking three classes, just enough to meet the requirements of being a varsity athlete.
During his first year at Queen’s, Simac’s teammates nicknamed him Dumas – a play on words he chose to interpret to mean he was as poetically inclined as legendary French writer Alexandre Dumas.
Taking the nickname in stride is a great example of his self-deprecating attitude and sense of humour that would endear him to so many teammates, coaches, and friends over the years.
The moment Willis knew Simac had serious potential to be a great player came during preparation for a big Ryerson hitter in Simac’s second year. An assistant coach was standing on a box hitting balls over the net, simulating the Ryerson player’s big swing.
The middle blocker stood on the other side, sending ball after ball back, and Willis knew then that with tremendous work ethic and dedication her pet project was destined for bigger and better things in volleyball.
For Simac, things weren’t so clear at Queen’s. He wasn’t sure volleyball was going to be a career for him until he joined the national team in 2008. But he does recall one instance at Queen’s where he began to believe he might have a future in the game.
“In my first year, I got subbed in late against Waterloo who wasn’t very good and I got a big block,” Simac recounts. “And one of the Queen’s alum sitting in the stands yelled out, ’It’s the future!’”
In Simac’s final year at Queen’s, the team won an Ontario championship. From there, he signed with an agent and wound up playing pro volleyball in Austria for 2 years.
He then approached men’s national team coach Glenn Hoag about transferring to the training centre in Winnipeg for the summer.
“Adam decided this was the way he wanted to do it, and we had these structures in place and he asked to join the structures,” Hoag outlines. “From then on, it was a collaboration.”
Simac says the refinements he made at that time was key to launching him farther in his career.
“I was good enough to get to this stage, but to progress, you have to be wiling to be criticized,” signals Simac. “When I opened myself to a new way of doing things, I was able to take the next step.”
During that first summer with the national team Simac met his future wife, Team Canada women’s player Ashley Voth (now Ashley Simac).
“Adam is such a nice guy, he’s really funny, and he always makes light of a situation,” says Ashley. “He’s also very hard-working. Anything he puts his mind to, he will accomplish, which is really motivating.”
Simac moved back to Ottawa in 2008 when the training centre relocated to Gatineau. He’d secured a spot on his first national team and began a key figure during Canada’s rise into one of the world’s top volleyball nations.
The winner of numerous best blocker awards at continental tournaments scored a big breakthrough in 2013 when Team Canada beat Russia en route to a 5th-place finish at the World League finals.
Simac powered Canada to its best-ever performance at the World Championships in 2014 (7th) and won a Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games bronze medal.
The crowning jewel came this past spring when he helped the Canadian men’s volleyball team qualify for their first Olympics in 24 years at the last-chance qualifier in Japan.
“It was a moment of organic joy,” the 33-year-old reflects. “A very proud moment.”
Simac’s career didn’t quite have the storybook finish he dreamed of. A shoulder injury and eventual surgery derailed him in 2015, and when Hoag had to trim the roster from 14 to 12 for the Olympics, Simac and fellow veteran Dan Lewis were left out.
Simac says it stung quite a bit to not be able to realize his dream, but he has no regrets about how he ended his career. Many people in the volleyball community wrote him off after the shoulder injury and he was proud of the effort he made just to get back into consideration.
As usual, his efforts were aided by his wife. She was the one who pushed him to give it another shot.
“I had at that point decided to move to Toronto, so it would have been an easy fix to say, ‘Hey, come to Toronto, give it up,’” recounts Ashley, who’d started a job with Leger Marketing. “I wanted him to pursue whatever he had in front of him, so he could end his career on a positive note.”
Simac now has joined Ashley in Toronto, where he is working as the strength and conditioning/assistant coach for the Ryerson Rams men’s and women’s university volleyball programs.
He has no desire to return to playing. Instead Simac is focused on developing the next generation of Canadian volleyball players, utilizing the natural leadership skills Hoag says were such a tremendous help to Simac’s teammates over the years.
Though Canadian volleyball fans will certainly remember Simac best for his time wearing the maple leaf, he also enjoyed many career highlights while overseas playing professionally in Europe.
From 2010-2015, Simac played for clubs in Germany, Slovenia, Turkey, Switzerland and France, earning two Slovenian championships with ACH Volley Ljubljana and a Turkish title under Hoag with Arkas Holding.
After finishing her studies at the University of Manitoba, Ashley was by Simac’s side from 2011 in Slovenia and onward, providing a calming presence in her husband’s life.
“We learned about each other really fast, always taking weekend trips to get to know the country we were in,” recounts Ashley, who provided inspiration to Simac every time he looked down between points and saw his wedding ring tied in his shoelace. “I could be there when he got home and he could forget about a bad game or practice, rather dwelling on it.”
The pair got to experience numerous countries in Europe and for Simac, the thrill of being a pro athlete never wore off. He took more than money and awards away from the experience.
“It taught me be open to new things, whether that’s a new way of doing things or new cultures, food, or people,” Simac explains. “The fact I got paid to play a sport for close to 10 years is something I’ll be eternally grateful for.”