BU opened Funk’s eyes to new passion

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This article was published 01/04/2023 (1023 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No one experienced a culture shock as profound as Shaun Funk did when joining the Brandon University Bobcats in 2007.

Sure, the three Australian imports who signed with the upstart Canada West men’s volleyball team were from another continent but Funk came from another world. He travelled 222 kilometres from Winkler, part of Manitoba’s “Bible Belt.” It was safe to assume everyone looked like him, thought like him and believed the same things his parents raised him to believe.

That suddenly changed when he and his wife, Vicki, moved to Brandon.

“Me coming from a pretty fundamental Christian environment and not working hard to understand folks that didn’t grow up and have the same life experiences I did wasn’t helpful. I didn’t work hard on that for the first two, three years of my time with Brandon University and I regret that,” Funk said.

“I think it was necessary for me to go through that experience to see that I can’t judge the world based on the way I grew up. We all have very different experiences.”

It certainly wasn’t easy but was definitely critical in pointing the 39-year-old toward his current vocation as director of Huddle Brandon, which provides mental health support to local youth.

It’s safe to say he wouldn’t be there if not for the Bobcats. And a chance to play for them definitely wouldn’t have been an option without his six-foot-nine frame.

Funk grew up playing whatever sport he could. Always being one of the bigger kids, he gravitated to volleyball and basketball with the encouragement of coaches who naturally weren’t about to watch a kid duck under doorframes without pushing him to play for them.

They learned Funk had the competitive fire to go with his size and that propelled him to become a multi-sport graduating all-star in 2000-01.

Funk wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after high school and stuck around at Garden Valley Collegiate, assisting volleyball coach Pat Alexander for three years while working at Kroeker Machinery Sales in Winkler, and then Little Morden Service.

The Bobcats joined Canada West in 2005, winning just four matches each of their first two years. Head coach Russ Paddock — now BU’s athletic director — held an ID camp at Winnipeg’s Red River College and Alexander convinced him to let Funk try out six years removed from high school ball.

“I was so sore the next day,” Funk chuckled. “Did the best I could and I’m big so still had a good blocking presence. I got a call from Russ and he said, ‘If you want to practise with the team, great. I can’t guarantee you a spot, you’re pretty rough.’ I knew that. So I said, ‘Sweet, I’m going to Brandon University.’”

BU EXPERIENCE

Funk expected to redshirt that season, watching Aussies Paul Sanderson, Cam Blewett and Luke Reynolds turn the team into a contender but ended up playing a few matches toward the end as a blocking sub. Brandon went 10-8 and made the playoffs for the first time before Thompson Rivers rolled into what’s now the Henry Champ Gymnasium and swept BU two nights in a row in the quarterfinals.

The sting of defeat couldn’t ruin the experience for Funk though.

“It’s the best volleyball in the country and here’s this guy from Winkler, Manitoba who’s really too old and too rough to play the game, who’s getting a chance in a great young program. I was so honoured and it was so much fun,” Funk said. “Best time of my life.”

That stayed consistent the next two years, as BU qualified for nationals and earned a bronze medal in 2009, and then experienced another quarterfinal home-court upset at the hands of TRU in 2010. Funk would sub in for setter Andrew Korol and later Kyle Dellezay, late in sets while Brandon served to help build an impenetrable wall at the net.

Funk expected to start in 2010-11, his final season, until seven-foot-one Australian Fred Marsh arrived. He still thought he’d have a bigger role until Paddock sat him down at practice the week the team was off to Queen’s for a pre-season tournament and told him he wasn’t even on the travelling roster.

“I was so pissed. I threw chairs in the locker room. I was mad,” Funk said. “The good thing that came out of that is it brought me back to why I wanted to play.”

Funk remembered why he loved his early years at BU. He got to train with the best players in Canada and that hadn’t changed. He committed to working as hard as he could and enjoying every minute.

It turns out good things sometimes come to those who work hard.

Marsh left at Christmas and Jonathan Sloane suffered a scaphoid fracture in his wrist, forcing the 2-6 Bobcats to thrust Funk into the lineup.

Six weeks later, Brandon was 10-8 and back in the post-season. Funk was ninth in the conference and leading the Bobcats with 1.04 blocks per set.

They travelled to Manitoba and split five-setters with the Bisons before winning Match 3 of their quarterfinal 3-1. Brandon edged Alberta 3-2 and then lost 16-14 to Calgary in the fifth set of the conference final.

The Bobcats punched their ticket to nationals in Langley, B.C., where they downed McMaster 3-1 and Laval 3-0 to reach the final. The host Trinity Western Spartans won that match in straight sets.

“It was so awesome,” Funk said. “Just being part of a team that’s playing their heart out that really stunk it up the first half and able to turn it around and redeem the season. Going to U of M, beating them in three, going to Canada West finals and nationals, it was the best way to end.

“I’m glad it paid off but even individually without that, I think that perspective shift in that last year was good for me.”

Funk was in a different stage of life than most of his teammates. While some made the two-minute walk from BU residence to the gym for practice, he was mowing the lawn at his Wheat City home.

He had priorities aside from team building when not at practice or on road trips. From a pure team perspective, in hindsight, he wishes he could have spent more time around the group.

The guys still taught him a lot about life. One lesson was on the court, where he realized his blocking and hitting ability could contribute to a team even though other facets of the game, serving, setting and especially defence were sorely lacking.

“Team sport is such a good metaphor for life because we all come from very different places and life,” Funk said. “Team sport works best if we lean into what we’re good at and work so hard at where we suck. Because our weaknesses are our liabilities in life.”

LIFE AFTER BU

Funk initially went to university so he could teach and coach. He graduated from BU and moved into a Grade 7 and 8 teaching role at Christian Heritage School in Brandon. He enjoyed coaching volleyball and basketball but realized the job felt too much like his hometown.

His eyes were opened to a world of diversity he could no longer ignore in a like-minded Christian bubble.

Westman Youth For Christ was the perfect fit. He started at YFC’s Uturn as a youth worker in 2012, becoming its director two years later.

The program focuses on supportive transitional housing for people aged 17 to 29. It focuses on individuals facing homelessness, usually folks who are not connected to their parents and have moved a lot. Funk said one person he worked with moved 52 times before their 18th birthday.

Of course, there’s more to it than handing someone keys to an apartment. Funk walks with young people who have experienced struggles and hardships many will never know. He can’t lean on personal experience to provide answers and has to be OK not knowing what to say sometimes.

“When you’re coming from a place where you don’t have personal experience, the natural but the worst thing to do is tell them what to do because you don’t know,” Funk said. “You ask good questions, you help them hear themselves and when they’re asking questions, you point them in a direction that might be helpful.

When you provide space for people to be themselves and process what’s going on in their life and what they need, that’s often really foreign for them too. They’re used to people telling them what to do and where to go to get help. When I’ve been at my best … I’ve been able to sit with people and say ‘Man, that’s really hard’ and provide space for them to process that and help them move forward when they’re ready to do that.”

Funk took a new position as director of Huddle Brandon in October. As Funk explains it, Huddle focuses on “wraparound supports and holistic health and wellness.” The goal is to identify issues detrimental to mental health early, rather than wait until situations get worse.

PARALLELS

YFC is the lead in a coalition of agencies — including Prairie Mountain Health, Brandon Friendship Centre, Career Employment Youth Centre, Addictions Foundation of Manitoba and Sexuality Education Resource Centre — that Huddle employs to support people aged 12 to 29.

Funk sees those organizations much like positions on a volleyball team.

He admits he could never be a libero, and the worst thing he could do is pretend to be one. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have worked on his passing and defence for the moments he needed them. In the same way, he does his best to serve others in any capacity while recognizing how much he and his colleagues need each other.

“I’m a six-foot-nine, white, cis-gendered Christian man. As good as my intentions are, how I look, what I believe is going to represent ill will to some folks walking through our door no matter what I do,” Funk said.

“So I need to do the best work I can do, I need other people who don’t look like me, who don’t believe like me to partner with me, which is very scary for somebody perhaps, considering colonization and trauma that people who look like me and believe like me have caused. I need them to do the work they do so youth are safe and can receive wholeness in that space.”

Having left BU more than a decade ago on a completely different path than he approached campus on, Funk sees his Bobcat experience as critical in shaping the rest of his life.

“It had a big part of it. I think being quite uncomfortable the first two or three years at BU, just being in a very different environment started the process of stripping away that everyone needs to come from the same place, think the same way or believe the same way,” Funk said.

“Part of me is like ‘Man, that’s silly’ looking back but it is my story. That’s just where I came from. All of us have a story that wasn’t chosen by us. A lot of who we are or start out to be is because of choices we never made … but I think there’s lots of learning that needs to happen in life. If we’re the same people we were 10, 20 years ago, I think there’s something wrong.

“We want people to see the world the way we see it … I think we need to start with a posture of just listening, asking good questions and allowing for people to be different than you are. That’s not easy, that’s not comfortable, it’s sometimes disorienting but I think our world becomes better when we can do that.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @thomasmfriesen