Mark Yolkowski

Mark Yolkowski was, much like many of you, an above-average athlete in high school. He graduated from Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate and Vocational School (KCI) in the year 2000. Immediately upon graduation, he took a year off of school to work for the City of Kitchener.

During this time, Mark became interested in the possibility of continuing to compete athletically at the post-secondary level. He used his knowledge of college athletics (and his spare time) to contact a large number of schools with his athletic resumé.

He received several letters from schools from the NAIA through to NCAA Division I, calls from assistant and head coaches, and later secured visits to several schools south of the border. He eventually settled on an athletic/academic scholarship package worth approximately $20,000 (U.S.) per year from the College of St. Scholastica (Duluth, Minnesota).

He competed in Cross-Country Running in the United States for several years before returning to Canada and finishing his degree at the University of Waterloo in 2006.

Mark is readily involved in high school athletics, having volunteered as a junior boys basketball coach at Resurrection CSS in Kitchener for the past five years. In addition, he maintains the CWOSSA High School Basketball blog, a website dedicated to high school basketball in Central-Western Ontario.