Glenn Hoag, coach of Canadian national team
In fact, it’s a success story seven years in the making.
And the man who built the foundation is coach Glenn Hoag, who has guided the team since 2006.
Volleyball isn’t a sport that gets a lot of attention in Canada, although that may change if the national team keeps developing and winning more.
But University of Winnipeg volleyball coach Larry McKay says outside of Canada, people know who Glenn Hoag is and they respect him. The national volleyball training centre was based in Winnipeg until it moved to Gatineau in 2009.
“In Europe, they think he’s one of the best coaches in the world,” says McKay, who adds that it’s a sentiment Hoag’s players share.
“He’s a guy that’s incredibly passionate about what he’s doing,” says receiver Justin Duff of Winnipeg.
On the team four years, he also played for Hoag when he coached professionally in Turkey.
“I’ve not seen a lot of people that care as much about their job and what they’re doing as he does.”
A key to Hoag’s plan to revitalize the national team was re-establishing the national training centre, after a decade when university players moved directly to international play.
Duff says that alone is huge. It gives Canada’s players the training they need to cope with teams from countries where you can turn pro at 17 or 18 and play full-time.
“The full-time centre helps us catch up. It gives us a full year of training physically and with basic skills of volleyball and advance tactics.”
Duff points to Rudy Verhoeff. The Calgary native had just finished university and never played pro, yet he was a huge contributor to their recent success in the World League thanks to the national centre.
But the rest of the story comes from what Hoag learned through years playing and coaching professionally in Europe — the way to succeed is basically to sweat the details.
“Establish systems and get the players to understand these are their references,” he says. “By establishing these systems, I established a training philosophy around them.”
“What I’ve been able to do is trap some teams because they think they’re so good,” Hoag says of his upstart Canadians. “We’ll do it with patience. We’ll do it with the qualities we want to develop.”
Check out Glenn Hoag’s WoV Community profile.
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