Ball State Ultimate Almuni
Senior - Jack Lesure
Junior's - Brendan Surane, Mike Scannell
Sophomore's - Austin Overby, Mitch Weiler, Matt Walsh
With only 43 Division 1 and 2 men's volleyball teams in the country, it is imperative that high school players participate at the club volleyball if they want to play at the collegiate level, said the director of one of the top volleyball clubs in the country.
The Ultimate Volleyball Club, located in Frankfort, Illinois, is where six current members and two commits of the Ball State men's volleyball team played. The volleyball club is one of the top in the country.
Joe Hovanes, the boy's program director at Ultimate, said club volleyball gives players the top competition.
“To play the top competition in the country, you play club volleyball," Hovanes said. "Club volleyball is comparable to AAU baseball and basketball, where it's kind of like the best of the best.”
Ball State University has crafted an ongoing connection with the Ultimate Volleyball Club. A sort of unspoken connection that states as long as Ultimate keeps producing potential elite players, head men’s volleyball coach Joel Walton will keep finding them and recruiting them.
Players on the current Cardinal roster who once played for Ultimate include senior Jack Lesure, juniors Brendan Surane and Mike Scannell, as well as sophomores Austin Overby, Mitch Weiler and Matt Walsh. Even women's volleyball player junior Jessica Lindsey came from the club.
Proximity is just one of the reasons why Hovanes believes players choose to play at Ball State.
“I think a lot of it has to do with Ball State being a good place to play volleyball and go to school," Hovanes said. "There’s a lot of history [at Ball State]. It’s a Division-1 program that’s very competitive, and we're not too far away. I run into the coaches, and they see our players, and it’s kind of been a really nice back and forth.”
Hovanes said the connection between Ultimate and Ball State simply developed through the years.
Even with the top-level of competition, it's unusual for six current players on one team to all have come from the same club team. Since Ultimate is one of the top volleyball clubs in the Midwest, it attracts players from far outside of the Chicago area, like Jack Lesure who went to high school in Carmel, Indiana.
Even with the distance, the club's competition attracted him to the point where he and two of his high school teammates spent an entire year driving nearly 18 hours a week to play for the team.
“Just the fact that these were the best players in the country and that these guys were going to go do stuff really attracted my interest, all the way from Indianapolis,” Lesure said.
Lesure said every current Ball State player who was on the club played or practiced against each other before coming to Muncie.
Weiler and Walsh are both sophomores from the Chicagoland area and played on every Ultimate team together. The long-time teammates helped Ultimate finish second in the 2014 USA Volleyball National Championship, as well as making Volleyball Magazine’s “Fab 50” — a list of the top senior players in the country.
“Ball state would always get guys from Ultimate to go to their camps, and some of the older guys who committed would come back and talk about Ball State, and it really gained my interest as well as Matt Walsh’s,” Weiler said.
The relationship has extended to the Ultimate class of 2017. Current high school junior Colin Ensalaco has already committed to Ball State — the first of his Ultimate class to commit to play Division 1. Blake Reardon, a class of 2016 Ultimate alumnus, also committed to Ball State as one of the top outside hitters to come out of the Chicago area.
Hovanes knows that this Ball State and Ultimate relationship is something unusual and special.
“What they’re learning in school and on the court are really valuable and important to the them,” Hovanes said. “I’m really excited that we do have that pipeline with Ball State.”
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