Sport for Life Canadian Summit announces father-son Olympic duo Glenn and Nick Hoag as keynote speakers

A father-son duo will take the stage together as keynote speakers during the upcoming 2022 Sport for Life Canadian Summit, which takes place on May 11 and 12. Keynote speakers Glenn and Nick Hoag will share their firsthand experience of implementing the Long-Term Development in Sport and Physical Activity framework (LTD)  into their volleyball careers.

“Nick is kind of an ‘LTD baby’. Right when he was starting out with volleyball, Sport for Life had introduced this revolutionary new framework and I was curious about the impact it would have on my own son’s development. As my understanding of Long-Term Development deepened, so did my son’s engagement with the sport,” said Glenn, who was the Head Coach at two Olympics (2016 and 2020) while his son was competing for Team Canada. 

The elder Hoag competed at the 1984 Olympics as a volleyball player, then went on to become an Olympic coach. He was part of the group that created the original LTD framework for Volleyball Canada, titled Volleyball for Life; he contributed to the Level 2 Coaching Manual for Volleyball Quebec, and has spent over a decade traveling all over the globe watching his players face off against the best in the world. That would eventually include Nick, who turned professional in 2013 and now competes for a club in Turkey – the same club coached by Glenn.

The sport system has been dramatically disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as various technological developments, and the Hoags have seen firsthand the impact this has had on elite athletes and their sport organizations. During the Summit, Nick will share insights from a volleyball athlete’s perspective on where we should be heading as a country.

“Volleyball has always been a way of life for us, so we always have our finger on the pulse of what’s coming next. What we’re seeing in Canada is a system that has begun to really see the fruits of its labour, with athletes who have come up with Long-Term Development performing at extremely high levels. Now the work is figuring out how to make that progress sustainable into the future,” Nick said. 

Sport for Life’s Tom Jones, Director of Community and International Engagement, is thrilled that the Hoags will be gracing the stage. As the setter on the 1984 Olympic volleyball team and former pro player, he’s been watching Glenn’s career for nearly four decades. 

“Glenn is, in my view, our country’s most successful high performance volleyball coach. He is respected around the world for his deep knowledge of the game, his ability to plan and prepare his teams for success, and for creating a system that has developed and retained our best players long enough to truly attain excellence. Getting our national teams to two successive Olympics is no accident,” said Jones. 

To learn from the Hoag’s along with other powerful keynotes and informative sessions, register now to attend one of the 10 Sport for Life Summits. To find the host city nearest you go to: sportforlife.ca/summit.

Have questions about the 2022 Summit? Contact Tyler Laing, Senior Manager of Communications at Sport for Life: tyler@sportforlife.ca.