The Thompson Rivers University WolfPack men’s volleyball team will have three international players on its roster when they open up the 2016-17 Canada West season.
Head coach Pat Hennelly and the WolfPack are announcing that Sam Hanon of Belgium will join the program in September. Hanon will be a ‘red shirt’ for the WolfPack this coming year as he gets accustomed to going to school in North America. TRU’s official international players for the coming season will be fifth year outside hitter Daniel Rod (Denmark) and first year outside hitter Anton Napolitano (Australia).
Hanon is an outside hitter as well. The 6’3” player has been involved in competitive volleyball since the age of eight (10 years). He attended Campus Redingenhof high school in Leuven, Belgium and played club volleyball for Lizards Lubbeek-Leuven. He is a left handed hitter. He plans to take courses aimed at earning a Bachelor of Science at Thompson Rivers.
“I am really nervous but impatient to come to Kamloops,” said Hanon, whose club team was third in the champion’s league of Belgium.
One of his club coaches this season was Koen Aerts. “He has a strong serve/receive game and has a strong work ethic. I think that he will have to work on getting more physical (but that is hard to do at the club level in Belgium) along with his attacking power and aggressiveness.”
“We learned about Sam through Chad (Grimm, TRU’s women’s head volleyball coach),” said Hennelly.
Grimm picks up the story: “When I played in Belgium, our trainer and assistant coach was Jean Francois Hanon who is Sam’s father. I was hurt at the end of the season while in Belgium and ended up living with their family while I recovered for a couple of months. We have had them visit us in Canada on a couple of occasions and I’ll be visiting them this summer in the south of France. This will be great to have Sam in Canada next year and allow him to experience living abroad and playing varsity athletics—the same opportunity I was given in Belgium. Sam is a competitive person and will bring good energy and fire to the team. He has good overall skills and will add another left handed arm to the lineup.”
Hanon becomes the third recruit for the WolfPack for the coming season joining Napolitano and setter Jakob Hamilton (Calgary, AB).
