There will be no third act for Glenn Hoag at the Olympics as coach of Canada’s men’s volleyball team.
A Canada Volleyball job posting in September looking to fill the post confirmed that Hoag was stepping away from the program—this time for good.
“For my future, it’s going to be tough,” Hoag told Momentum Volleyball about where he thinks his future lies. “It won’t be related to volleyball. At least another year, maybe two (coaching his club team in Izmir, Turkey) and then after that—I’m not ready to stop. Maybe work. Maybe do something else. I have no idea.”
Hoag was never supposed to be on the sidelines when Canada played in its second straight Olympics in Tokyo. He stepped aside after the fifth place performance in Rio in 2016.
Stephane Antiga took over the program tasked will building on Hoag’s work. Antiga came in having coached Poland to a 2014 World Championship victory.
With Antiga in charge, Canada picked up a bronze at the 2017 World League and ninth at the 2018 World Championships in Bulgaria.
Not long after worlds, though, Antiga stepped aside.
Family demands weren’t compatible with coaching a club team in Poland while jetting across the globe with Canada who faced long journeys in the World and then Nations League every year.
Given the timing with the countdown for Olympic qualifying fast approaching, there was only one logical option: Hoag was back in.
“We were lucky to have Steph. He was a world champion with Poland and accepted to come,” said Hoag. “We wish he would have continued.”
Hoag dove right back into the environment as Canadian head coach. The road to Tokyo started in 2019 in China in a four-team intercontinental tournament against China, Argentina and Finland where Canada needed to win to qualify.
A loss in their first match to Argentina meant Canada would go onto finish second and force them to take the long road.
Next up was the NORCECA qualifying tournament in January. That featured wins over Mexico, Cuba (an unforgettable five-set thriller where Canada came back from two sets down) and Puerto Rico that saw Canada in back-to-back Olympics for the first time.
And then, the world shut down.
The Olympics were delayed and preparations halted for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I didn’t expect it to be that long. We really wanted the games,” said Hoag. “What I did was I created a timeline for the last quad and basically and 2020 was a write-off from January on. We had about 10 days where we were kind of able to train at the centre.”
Even when they returned to the court, the team had an odyssey even before getting to Tokyo.
For 2021, the Nations League was at a single venue in Rimini, Italy. When that wrapped up, though, Canada became vagabonds looking for a place to play before setting up a final preparation camp in Japan.
The team had hoped to come home for a few weeks but the quarantine restrictions that prevented Canadian athletes in several sports from coming home meant Canada had to look elsewhere for places to play and train.
“What was kind of irritating was that they let the Montreal Canadiens come back and do their thing and many of the amateur athletes, not only us, were not able to come back,” said Hoag. “We have to prepare the group so we tried to do our best in that. I was able to contact Izmir. Izmir is really close to the Aegean Sea and the coast so I was able to get the guys in a resort for about a week with their families. Otherwise it would have been 70 days on the road without them. A lot of these guys are young fathers.”
Canada would go onto finish fifth just like they did in 2016 and the Hoag era came to an end for the second time.
The delayed Tokyo games mean whoever takes over for Hoag has to quickly determine what veteran players will come back for another go at an Olympics while making sure young players continue to get chances in international competitions.
Balancing the future with the present is a tough task and Hoag knows Canada has to develop the future while still being competitive in Nations League. As one of the challenger teams, one bad year from Canada sees them relegated from the top flight and chances to play the top teams every week is lost until they get promoted again.
“I’ve always approached with ‘What do I have? What’s the timeframe?’ We don’t even know what the qualifier will look like yet. We think they’re going to modify things,” said Hoag.
“I think we’ve got to throw down a plan with the players we have and then from there, we always have the Olympic games and I then backtrack and see where the position is where we need to grow guys rapidly. Or if they’re young players coming into these positions, how do we give them enough playing time.”
Hoag knows his successor is already at a disadvantage compared to other programs. Unlike the volleyball powers that all have pro leagues to draw from, Canada’s talent pool is much smaller as players are mostly drawn from the university and college system.
That sets Canada back because if a player doesn’t make their university team or doesn’t even attend post-secondary, they don’t play volleyball and their development stops entirely.
He used the example a pro player in the Turkish league who is a trained mechanic. When his pro volleyball career is done, he’ll work on cars for a living. Were he coming through the Canadian system, he would likely never reach the pro ranks since he would never go through the university ranks.
Hoag knows a professional league in Canada, should that day ever arrive, would fix a structural disadvantage compared to its peers on the world stage.
“I wish we had a pro league. We would have a better base. We would have all these guys that love volleyball,” said Hoag.
“How can we look at a libero coming out of university with an engineering degree has to choose between maybe finding a club on really low pay and going to be an engineer. We’re always facing that challenge.”