Standout high-school athletes are commonly courted by university coaches who want them to come play at their school. Such was the experience of Haben Yohannes, a volleyball player from Scarborough, Ontario, when he was in grade 12.  

Some coaches he spoke to would bad-mouth rival schools. But the McMaster coach, Dave Preston, just gave Yohannes a simple, unique piece of advice: Go wherever you want. But pick somewhere you’d be happy to study if you had a career-ending injury.  

This led Yohannes to McMaster, for the university’s renowned volleyball program and a degree in Life Sciences. “It was good advice,” Yohannes said: After four years on the team, he’s stopped playing volleyball, but he’s still very happy at McMaster. In his time at Mac so far, he’s also become an influential member of the campus community, making an impact on and off the court.  

‘Leave it better than you found it’ 

The men’s volleyball team is perennially in the top three nationally, and their success continued with Yohannes: They won three OUA championships between 2021-2024, and Yohannes was a USports bronze medalist in 2023. 

More than athletic achievement, Yohannes is driven by what he describes as a “plus-one” mentality. “Our assistant coach, Ian Eibbitt, had a saying, leave it better than you found it,” he said. “That’s always the mindset… trying to add value.”   

In his second year with the men’s volleyball team, Yohannes thought there was an opportunity to grow the team’s digital presence. He took over the @mcmastermvb Instagram account, posting photos more regularly and bringing in a small team to support the account in the following year. The account’s audience successfully grew from 3,500 to 26,000 followers.

He suffered an injury in his third year; then, in his fourth year, he was nominated for Leadership Council, a small group of players elected by teammates to lead the team, and took on the role of President with the Black Student Athlete Council (BSAC). “I feel like I can add a lot of value with my voice, and if I don’t add value on the court, I’m going to find a way to add value elsewhere.”  

‘Student athletes are community leaders’ 

The Black Student Athlete Council is unique in post-secondary schools across Canada and the United States, Yohannes said. “It was cool to step into that role, to get to influence something that was so important to me,” he said. “Being from an underrepresented sport, to have an opportunity and a platform to action things that I thought were right… it’s a great opportunity.”  

Any Black student athlete automatically has membership in the BSAC. In the 2024-2025 school year, BSAC had an executive team of 14 student-athletes. Their mission is to improve Black student athlete life and advocate for their needs, primarily through running community-building events, and they work closely with equity, diversity and inclusion specialists.  

“[The] Athletics [department] always says that student athletes are leaders within the community,” Yohannes said. “Black student athletes are leaders within the Black community at McMaster.”  

It can be isolating to be a Black student athlete without community, Yohannes said. While organizations like the Black Student Success Centre do “an amazing job” at building that Black community, the BSAC seeks to fill that gap within athletics.  

Last year, the BSAC’s events included a networking event in collaboration with DeGroote’s MBA program; an NBA opening night watch party with food from a local Jamaican restaurant; Black History Month games; and a three-on-three basketball tournament in collaboration with two other clubs, Mac Africans and McMaster Blackprint.  

They also collaborated with Caidence Amartey, a Black student artist, to create a new logo featuring a Kente cloth, which is a Western African textile, and a Black Marauder, who represents Black student athletes.  

This has been some of the work he’s proudest of in his four years at Mac so far, Yohannes said.  

As an East African playing volleyball, he gets messages and words of support from people – “like, it’s amazing” – including parents, who will come up to him at games. “They often would come and say that seeing people who look like us is rare in volleyball. Because of this, that I was a role model for their children looking to play university volleyball,” Yohannes said. “They would ask for photos and that was special and meant a lot to me.”

Next year, Olivia Koffi will take over as president of BSAC (she was the vice-president in 2024-2025). “She’s going to do amazing things,” Yohannes said.  

He’s stepping into a new role as Director of the Diversity and Equity Network with the McMaster Students Union (MSU). “I think that project is going to be really interesting and there’s tons of amazing opportunities to effect change within that,” he said.  

Making training for athletes more accessible 

Yohannes also works as the Director of Equity and Growth for AIRTIME Volleyball, which was founded by two McMaster grads, Maxime Gratton and Maurice el Helou to make high-performance volleyball training more accessible.  

In Ontario, “there’s a huge problem with coaches not being able to effectively support the needs of youth athletes,” Yohannes said. Players can get lost if they’re not meeting certain criteria at an early age. “If we’re meant to focus on youth development… we should be developing everybody, and not just identifying the best talent.”  

AIRTIME hires student athletes to coach small group training sessions that continue throughout the summer. They received an amazing response from the Hamilton community, Yohannes said; now in their second year, they have 705 athletes.  

They teach them with the ARR framework: awareness, resilience and respect. “Pursuing something that’s difficult, that’s a lesson in itself,” he said. 

As part of the management team, Yohannes oversees their social media, which includes a creative director and a few content creators; hiring coaches; long-term growth and connections with other university partners; and their equity and scholarship programs. 

AIRTIME offers sliding and financial aid, based off household income and Canadian data to see who’s getting missed out in support. In two years, Yohannes said, they’ve given more than $10,000 in aid.  

They also recently partnered with Mountain Athletic Club, a local Hamilton youth boys club, to offer three scholarships at $500, which they gave out for the first time this summer (one scholarship is named in part after Yohannes: The Yohannes-Levinson Community Leadership Award).  

The scholarships are “a cool way for us to give back to the Hamilton community that gives a lot to us,” he said. “They showed up and they showed a lot of love.”  

AIRTIME plays out of McMaster, where they get a discounted rate for gym rentals and a space within the facility to store their things. They have a partnership with the volleyball programs to share equipment at a reasonable fee.  

They’re also working on a McMaster campus tour with the university’s Athletics department for all the AIRTIME athletes, to enable them to see themselves in that environment.  

He wants the athletes they train to be able to gain technical skills, but so much more beyond that, too. “We talk a lot about mentality,” Yohannes said. “We talk a lot about understanding that sport isn’t a right, it’s a privilege.”  

Whether or not they go on to play at the next level, he tries to remind them to enjoy the moment, because it’s fleeting.  

“I always tell them, when you go into those gameplay scenarios, I want you to remember that this is going to end on a random Tuesday,” he said. “So give it your all.”  

 Haben Yohannes would like to thank Dr. Clare Warner, Keenan Jeppesen, Alyssa McQuaid Barsby and Shawn Burt for their guidance and mentorship. Additionally, he thanks all of his teammates, coaches and the Athletics administration at McMaster for the role they’ve played in his athletic and personal development.