2010 18U MALE COACH OF THE YEAR

As an athlete, Tyler Myroniuk has put in a lot of work improving and refining his skills.  He spent the first two seasons of his post-secondary career at Grant MacEwan College where he played as both a Left-side and Libero.  In his first season at the college (2004-05) his team won a Silver medal at the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference’s Provincial Championships. In 2005-2006, the MacEwan team finished fourth in the province. Tyler is a multi-talented individual as he was also named an ACAC Academic Athletic Award Recipient in 2005-2006 for maintaining honors standing in his coursework. 

Tyler transferred to the University of Alberta in 2006.  In 2008 he was the Golden Bears back-up libero and regular serving sub; the team won the CIS National Championships that season. Tyler continued to keep his academic standards high as he collected an Academic All-Canadian award.  In 2009, Tyler earned the starting role as Libero, helping to team to an undefeated 23-0 season and their second straight National Championship.   

Most recently, Tyler has turned to perfecting his skills on the beach.  Tyler and his partner, Tim Gourlay won the Silver Medal in the 24U Division at the 2009 Canadian Open. 

Tyler’s playing experience has given him the technical knowledge to enable him to give back to the sport.  In 2006, he was the head coach of the Zone 6 Alberta Summer Games Men’s and Women’s Beach Volleyball teams.  He took on more responsibility in 2007 when he was named the Head Coach of the Women’s Team Alberta Beach Program.  Finally, he took on the entire Team Alberta Beach program in 2008 as the Head Coach for both teams.  

Tyler began coaching with the NAVC Club program in 2007.  His initial role was as an assistant coach to Brad Poplawski when they took their Bears team to a Silver medal finish at Provincials and a top-8 performance at Nationals.   Tyler took over the 18U Men’s Head Coach position this season- Tyler put a lot of time and energy into planning practices for the team.  He worked hard with his players to improve their skill level and the hard work paid off.  The NAVC Gold team had an extremely successful year winning the Gold medal at three of the Premier events before going on to claim the Provincial championship banner. At the Canadian Open, the NAVC Gold Bears earned a quarterfinal berth in Tier 1 before falling in three sets to finish the event tied for fifth.  

Although it is still early in his coaching career, and Tyler will surely continue to grow and develop as a coach, he has demonstrated that he has all the prerequisites to be an exceptional coach and has earned the title of Coach of the Year. 

Tyler is still balancing Volleyball with school as he is currently working on his Master’s Degree in the department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. This work has taken him to Malawi in southern Africa to do some fieldwork for his thesis.  However, he is still giving back as he is coaching a local team and will be playing in the Malawian National Championships. Unfortunately, this work has prevented him from attending tonight’s event.