The Way of an Outside Hitter
When a person first steps into the Matadome gym before a volleyball game, the tension in the air is thick. Fans for both teams trickle into the bleachers on either side of the room as each group of players gets the chance during warmup to send a ball flying across the opposite side of the court with a resounding “slam!” The scene changes once the whistle blows and the 20 individuals become a group. If a volleyball team were the body, most people would expect setters to operate as the brain and control the game. Maciej Ptaszyński knows differently.
“My coach always told me that the person who can influence the game the most is the outside hitter,” Maciej said. “It’s up to us to pass, it’s up to us to kill the ball. Digging and zone assists from the back row are also pretty important and a big part of volleyball because people go cross court into the corners.”
Standing at 6-foot-6, the Polish outside hitter for the men’s volleyball team and global supply chain management major at California State University, Northridge understands the game well and loves it even more. He was born on Nov. 16, 1998, in Gdansk, Poland — thousands of miles away from Los Angeles. Maciej’s first memory of playing volleyball was at the beach with his father when he was a child, being led out of the house and to the sandy court where he’d play for hours. The sand turned to polished wood as he grew and he joined his school’s elementary team in third grade, eventually being recruited by the SMS NR2 developmental academy before his high school years. He acquired two Most Valuable Player awards and reached the Poland championship final during his four years at the SMS NR2. He held the outside hitter position for most of this time, save for junior high when he was placed in the libero position, which specializes in defense and stays in the back row.
“There are a lot of responsibilities as an outsider [hitter], but I love challenges and I think that’s why I will never want to switch that position,” Maciej said.
Kyle Merchen, the newest setter on the men’s volleyball team, echoes Maciej’s comments on the responsibility of outside hitters and setters. Much like a quarterback in football, setters help with running plays and bringing out the talent in their fellow teammates. He believes repetition and practice are key to building the relationship between these two positions so they can basically read each other’s minds.
“[Maciej and my] relationship dynamic is exactly what you would expect out of two experienced volleyball players. We both understand each other to the point that we don’t need to say much and we just play hard for each other,” Merchen said in an email. “The way Maciej moves, and plays is everything you’d want in a volleyball player and the knowledge of the game he poses is like none other.”
Life and Sports Abroad
Maciej was led to CSUN in 2018, where he’s since made the 2018 Big West All-Freshman Team and received a 2020 All-Big West Honorable Mention. He joined the Matadors as a freshman looking to improve his own skills and soak up as much of the American culture he’d grown up admiring as he could. Since then, Maciej has attended a basketball game at the Staples Center — an experience he described as “pretty overwhelming” due to the sheer size of the arena — and learned as much of the English language as he can, including slang and the special terms used within the volleyball squad.
“Volleyball, overall, is a sport that brings people together and is a great means of communication,” said Maciej. “Sport is a universal language, so in that sector I really had no problems communicating. I just had to get used to all of the specialized language, like how you call certain parts of a game.”
As a first-year student, Maciej had to acclimate not just to American volleyball or college life itself, but also life in Los Angeles. He had a friend from Poland, Ksawery Tomsia, that had played on the men’s volleyball team since 2017 and could show Maciej around. Tomsia was the closest thing to a role model for Maciej, especially due to the fact that they could freely talk about and enjoy topics like cultural differences. When he arrived in spring 2018, missing what is considered the “preparation season” for the volleyball team, Maciej felt the weight of extra expectations on him. Tomsia, with finality in his voice and in the true fashion of a mentor, assured Maciej that he would be accustomed to the team culture by the time he was a senior. Maciej felt he was an integral part of the team only a year later, when he became a sophomore as he began to play volleyball with his new teammates and gain more confidence.
“I’ve always felt like I was part of the family and that nothing bad will happen to me,” Maciej said. “I remember this one day when I had a root canal, my insurance was not covering it and my team chipped in for it. I definitely feel like I’m a part of something big, and people will help me, even though I wasn’t a great speaker then.”
However, Maciej still had some things he needed to work through himself. He was having to now become completely independent as a result of living alone. Things like making his own breakfast and worrying about finances were now added to his daily routine of balancing training and schoolwork. The new responsibilities of living alone wasn’t the only thing that surprised Macej, though.
In some volleyball leagues, including the United States’, pre-game warm-up is customary. Teams are allowed seven minutes to practice from their starting side of the court, then they take a mandatory seven-minute break to allow the opposing team time to warm up as well. It goes for two rounds — 14 minutes in total for each team — until the actual game begins. This routine is less common in other areas, like Europe, so Maciej’s own pre-game rituals had to adjust according to this new surprise. Even to this day, he says, it throws him off. Athleticism was another thing that set the U.S. apart from Europe, according to Maciej. He believes athletes in the U.S. possess slightly more athleticism, which makes sense, he says, considering how they train.
Training for the Future
College athletics require work, according to Philip Barker, a middle blocker on the men’s volleyball team. Training during preseason — the time period before the official season begins — mostly consists of weight training and conditioning, but it can greatly affect the result of the official games. Seniors on the team like Maciej and Philip understand this, and put their all into leading their younger teammates to victories.
“We show how much we want to improve each and every day… we put all of our effort into everything we do and we teach this mindset to the younger guys,” Barker said in an email.
Because of this dedication, Maciej starts each day at around 7:30 a.m., shaking the sleep from his eyes as he begins the standard morning routine: brush the teeth, choose an outfit, get dressed and cook a light breakfast — scrambled eggs some mornings, and oatmeal on others. Before even entering practice, he has to be screened as part of the COVID-19 safety procedures adopted as a result of the pandemic. Stretching starts at 9, and 20 minutes later he’s completing extra sets of drills as his teammates drift into the Matadome. Clanking metal and labored breaths become part of the soundtrack to a day of practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the players all shuffle into the campus’ weight room to work on building and maintaining their strength. These training dates have become especially important after the COVID-19 pandemic, which left many of Maciej’s Californian teammates without a gym to work out or practice their skills in as a result of business closures.
In the summer of 2020, Maciej was able to return home for a few months despite facing major limitations and high prices in the spring. Poland didn’t have a lockdown in effect at that point, so he was still able to freely train through beach volleyball. He spent the following months attending online classes and training with his old high school team after his coach invited him back to help the students prepare for their upcoming season. Through this arrangement, Maciej was able to stay in Poland for longer than usual, as well as train, even getting to play practice games with his former team as a substitute.
“That helped me learn a lot because I was playing with guys who had won world championships, which is a completely different level of volleyball [compared to college],” said Maciej.
When Maciej returned to the United States earlier this year, he had a mandatory 10-day quarantine before he could practice with the CSUN men’s volleyball team again. The first two weeks of training consisted of conditioning outside on the soccer field, then they slipped back into their usual routine inside the gym, now with much more distance between each other and COVID testing three times a week.
All of that hard work and dedication is just another part of the routine for a college volleyball player, especially for those who want to pursue a professional career. According to the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), there are five major volleyball confederations and roughly 218 professional leagues across the globe, some that represent both indoor and beach volleyball. Due to the current National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules, college athletes aren’t permitted to sign contracts with professional teams or receive financial benefits, but he made sure to draw the attention of professional coaches while playing in Poland last summer. There’s opportunities across the globe for Maciej, but he has his eyes set on home.
“The Polish national team is back-to-back World Champions, so where else would I play volleyball if not in one of the best leagues in the world?” Maciej said.
Maciej has one last season to stand on CSUN’s court. A spring graduation means these final few months will be meaningful to him in many ways, and bring exciting new opportunities. He currently sits as the Big West aces leader, and helps drive CSUN closer to this year’s Big West Tournament in Hawai’i. Nothing has been set in stone for Maciej yet, but there’s hope in his eyes as he discusses his future plans over a Zoom call. For now, he will continue to do what he knows best: influence the game as an outside hitter.
