From Spike To Support
Niko Rukavina’s journey in mental health
Written by Lucas Yang | Edited by Marc Louie
Sports have defined Rukavina’s life ever since he was four, when he started playing sports such as paperweight hockey, t-ball, and soccer.
Like many young, aspiring athletes in Canada, Rukavina settled on hockey as his main competitive sport, playing in the GTHL until he was 17-years-old. Yet, he quickly realized that the NHL wasn’t in his future and eventually fell in love with the sport of volleyball through a high school gym teacher.
Since then, volleyball has been the main theme of Rukavina’s life.
Following high school, Rukavina attended Queen’s University, where he competed on the varsity volleyball team for five years. During his time with the Gaels, Rukavina won two OUA championships and two OUA silver medals.
His time at Queen’s also marked his first exposure to mental health. He recalls that his first few experiences were seen not in himself, but in his teammates. Rukavina saw the highs and lows of mental health in one of his own teammates.
“It kind of opened my eyes to how many people are going through things silently,” Rukavina said.
Photos by Queens Athletics & Recreation
Rukavina competed at Queen’s in the late 2000s and early 2010s, a time when the mental health landscape was a mere fraction of what it is today.
“It wasn’t frowned upon, but we didn’t talk about it. It was something you dealt with on your own,” he says.
This attitude carried over into his career overseas, where he spent one season competing in Sweden and another in Germany, but in a different way.
For many athletes transitioning to professional sports leagues overseas—in particular, volleyball—the experience of adjusting to language barriers among teammates, coaches, and support staff is a difficult one. Rukavina’s experience was no different.
Although he felt as if he had the necessary support system around him to thrive, the language barrier added an additional layer that made it uncomfortable for Rukavina to reach out.
“It’s hard enough to talk about anything serious when there is a language barrier and the people you are talking to don’t really understand the nuance of what you’re saying,” he says.
Pile that on top of living alone in a foreign country, Rukavina found himself in the middle of two of the most challenging years of his life, mentally.
The lack of technology at the time—which now gives us useful tools to connect with family and friends, such as FaceTime and video calls—wasn’t as prevalent during Rukavina’s pro career. This led him to feel a sense of disconnect from his family and friends, which added another layer of mental struggle.
Rukavina is now the Head Coach of the Varsity Mens Volleyball Team at Toronto Metropolitan University, giving him a different perspective on mental health in athletics.
Rukavina emphasized the change in perspective mental health brought him in his transition from a player to a coach. He describes it as a full 180-degree shift.
Players competing in high-performance sport find themselves very self-focused and self-driven. However, coaches like Rukavina do quite the opposite. Coaches are now in charge of an entire roster, which means being responsible for multiple bodies and multiple minds.
Photo by Nathan Gerson
“It really opens your eyes to how much is going on,” he says.
Rukavina prides himself on having strong relationships with his players so that if they need to open up to him about something going on in their life, they don’t hesitate. He also emphasizes the value in coaches prioritizing their mental health and offers an interesting perspective on the struggles coaches face.
A big struggle for Rukavina is not having the ability to go out and compete himself. Though he has tremendous trust in his players to perform, Rukavina highlights this as one of the main struggles of his coaching career.
“I use them as my mental health reset,” he says.
Looking back at both his playing and coaching career, Rukavina underscores the importance of listening and making those who are struggling with mental health feel heard. When you don’t just listen, but actually make someone who is struggling feel heard, that’s when you know you are truly making a difference. For Rukavina, the goal is as simple as that. Making people feel heard is a small action that, in Rukavina’s position, can make a huge difference—a simple goal that he strives to achieve every day.