By Martin Cleary
Lionel Woods is in his element.
The volleyball season is underway for his 38th year with the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees women’s program, including the last 34 years as head coach, and life couldn’t get much better from a job perspective.
“I love the annual excitement,” Woods said with pure joy. “We’re building again. Every year, we build this project and find solutions. There are new kids, new faces and kids who are older. It has never been boring.”
What’s even more interesting than his longevity and being the Gee-Gees’ longest serving head coach in the varsity sports program is Woods never intended to be a volleyball coach.
Woods, 59, was aware of volleyball, but never played the sport. His focus growing up was scoring and preventing goals in soccer and hockey.
As a student at the University of Ottawa, where he earned bachelor degrees in human kinetics and education and a Masters degree in sports administration, Woods also was developing a career as a sports coach. In 1988, he carefully stepped into the women’s volleyball program as an assistant coach and student athlete therapist.
“When I started, it wasn’t a job, but something on the side. I loved teaching and that job, but the fact I could hand pick my kids and run my own show was really exciting for me,” explained Woods about leaving teaching and becoming a full-time volleyball coach.
Midway through the Gee-Gees’ 1991-92 season, Woods was named the team’s head coach, which ignited a career spanning four decades with significant highs and balancing lows as his win-loss records would indicate – 295-256 (regular season) and 330-296 (regular season and playoffs).
“I never was a volleyball guy,” Woods admitted. “I never played volleyball. I learned about volleyball through coaching opportunities over 35 years. I think of this as a puzzle and how to find the solutions.”
Woods was scheduled to lead the Gee-Gees into the second week of their OUA schedule Friday night against the Royal Military College Paladins at Montpetit Hall. The second game of the weekend doubleheader is Saturday.
The Gee-Gees, who opened their season with a 3-0 win and a 3-1 loss to the University of Toronto Varsity Blues, returned to the OUA last season, after an eight-year stint in Quebec’s RSEQ conference.
When the Gee-Gees moved to the RSEQ for the 2016-17 season and then announced in 2023 their return to the OUA for the 2024-25 season, it basically was for the same reason – the betterment of the program.
“When we moved to the RSEQ, at the time, our program was doing well. We were a top-10 team. We also had an exhibition schedule with five teams in Quebec,” Woods explained.
For three consecutive seasons (2012-13 through 2014-15), the Gee-Gees qualified for the Canadian university championship tournament. Ottawa earned a best-ever fourth-place result in 2013 and defeated the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds in 2015 to win the consolation final and secure fifth place.
During that stretch, Woods felt that if there was an opportunity to move to the RSEQ, the program would welcome it. It would save the women’s volleyball program money on travel, the players would spend less time away from their home base and it would help build the Quebec conference, which only had five teams at the time.
“Quebec loved it and wanted my team, and Ontario didn’t hate it,” added Woods, who made the move about the same time as the Gee-Gees women’s rugby and hockey teams also shifted to the RSEQ.
But it didn’t turn out to be a perfect scenario.
When Woods tried to recruit players for future teams in the RSEQ, he often heard a similar statement – so, we won’t be playing throughout Ontario in front of our parents.
“I will take all the heat on that,” stated Woods, who knew the calibre of play in the RSEQ was just as good, if not better, than the OUA.
Recruiting also was difficult because tuition at the University of Ottawa was almost double what Quebec students would pay in their home province.
When it came to athletic scholarships, Quebec student-athletes would receive amounts equal to tuition, but players on the Gee-Gees would only get a maximum of $5,000 because Ottawa was playing in the RSEQ as an OUA member and had to follow those provincial conference rules and regulations. That amount was only equal to about half of today’s tuition at uOttawa.
The RSEQ also started to grow by adding division 2 teams to its top league, which meant long bus rides to more distant universities, including Chicoutimi.
“Now, it was the same as going to Windsor,” Woods added, comparing the long trip to Chicoutimi to the one the team previously had in the OUA.
“The benefits of being in Quebec had disappeared. We always ask what’s best for our program.”
In 2023, Woods talked to then-athletic director Hylland and Danika Smith, the assistant director high performance athletics, about returning the Gee-Gees women’s volleyball team to the OUA.
The RSEQ and the OUA welcomed the transfer and shortly after it was announced Woods found recruiting high school student-athletes became more positive. The Gee-Gees women’s hockey program also moved back to the OUA about the same time.
“It absolutely was the right move to try it. It was worth it,” Woods said about his team’s experience in the RSEQ. “But it was a good thing to come back (to the OUA). The RSEQ said it was awesome to let us go and the OUA said it was awesome to welcome us back.”
The Gee-Gees’ return to the OUA last season wasn’t worthy of a berth in the playoffs (7-13), but it would have come close, if they had won more of their league-high nine five-set matches.
“But we’re in a good place now,” Woods said about the 2025-26 season. “We have the same starting lineup that finished as our starting lineup last season.”
Many of the players remained in Ottawa during the off-season to develop their individual and team skills.
“With the academic workload and the travel, you can’t develop a team in the season,” he added. “In the off-season, you have that time for strength training, video learning and practising once a week.”
Training in June and July is all optional, but the gyms and coaching staff are made available to the players.
“Once a week we’ll have a scrimmage night and focus on one particular item. Three times a week the players do their strength and conditioning programs at 7 a.m. before heading to their summer jobs,” Woods said.
The 2025-26 edition of the Gee-Gees women’s volleyball squad isn’t a big team, but rather athletic as most players can jump and touch the rim on a 10-foot basketball hoop.
“We go after the kids who can jump. We have to play big,” Woods explained. “We are fast, explosive, athletic and versatile.
“In our minds, we are a playoff team. We’ll get there. When we left the OUA, making the top eight was not as difficult. But the coaching and athletes are incredible now and parity has doubled. There are 15 teams in the conference and 12 are legit to thinking they can make the playoffs.”
Martin Cleary has written about amateur sports for over 52 years. A past Canadian sportswriter of the year and Ottawa Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement in Sport Media honouree, Martin retired from full-time work at the Ottawa Citizen in 2012, but continued to write a bi-weekly “High Achievers” column for the Citizen/Sun.
When the pandemic struck, Martin created the High Achievers “Stay-Safe Edition” to provide some positive news during tough times, via his Twitter account at first and now here at OttawaSportsPages.ca.
Martin can be reached by e-mail at martincleary51@gmail.com and on Twitter @martincleary.
