Former Semiahmoo Secondary volleyball star Michael Dowhaniuk is making an impact on university courts, and earlier this month was awarded the 2018 Ray Lepp Scholarship.
Announced by Volleyball BC in early November, the $2,000 Rap Lepp award honours one of the founding members of Volleyball BC and each year recognizes two athletes – one male, one female – who have previously been a “contributing member” of a the most recent BC provincial team for which they were eligible, “demonstrate significant potential, preferable showing promise to compete at the national team level,” while also having excelled at the youth and high-school level. Being “a positive role model for other athletes” is also among the listed criteria.
The female recipient of the 2018 Ray Lepp Scholarship was Trinity Western University’s Savannah Purdy.
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In an interview with Volleyball BC after being named the Ray Lepp winner, Dowhaniuk said that the off-the-court project he is most proud of was being a student organizer for the Great Peninsula Race, in which South Surrey high schools raised money for ACCES Kenya.
Dowhaniuk is in his first year with the UBC Thunderbirds men’s volleyball team. He won back-to-back provincial senior boys titles at Semiahmoo in 2016 and ’17 – earning MVP honours both years – and has a long list of provincial and national accolades that include a Volleyball BC provincial gold medal in 2018, a bronze medal – and MVP nod – for Team BC at the 2017 Canada Summer Games, as well as a bronze medal at the NORECA Junior Continental Championships earlier this year in Cuba, where he served as team captain of Canada’s squad.
Dowhaniuk called that tournament “an unbelievable experience that is indescribable.”
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