John May, a former star on the men’s volleyball team and Sport York Hall of Fame member, graduated from York with a bachelor of arts in sociology and coached at the club level for a number of years before beginning his CIS coaching career at the University of Toronto, where he led the women’s team to their first ever OUA championship in 1987. Following his coaching stint at U of T, he became involved with coaching beach volleyball at the national level and was named head coach of the men’s beach volleyball Olympic team for the 2004 Athens Olympics. He also served as the personal coach of the team of Kristina Valjas and Jamie Broder, one of Canada’s top-ranked female beach teams and under his guidance have grew into a top-10 ranked team in the world and qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Most recently, May was head coach of the York women’s volleyball team from 2016-18 and led the team to two consecutive playoff appearances.
As a player, May led York to the CIAU national championship tournament three times and won three OUA championships. He was named an OUA first-team all-star twice and was inducted into the Sport York Hall of Fame in 2008.
