printed with permission from The Vancouver Province
VANCOUVER - In a manner of speaking, you could call Blair Bann the ultimate buried treasure because over the past five seasons, the senior libero with the UBC Thunderbirds' men's volleyball team has turned his version of the dig into a rare art.
Roundly ignored by every Canadian Interuniversity Sport program in the country over his senior year at Edmonton's J.H. Picard Catholic, UBC head coach Richard Schick acted on a late tip to make Bann a last-second signing.
Tonight, some five years later, as the Birds (5-9) open their final home Canada West series of the regular season against the Regina Cougars (2-12), Bann will be honored as part of the 'Birds seniors night, a celebration which could push the actual 8 p.m. start time back a few extra minutes should event officials decide to acknowledge every one of his long-list of record-breaking accomplishments.
Put quite simply, the kid that nobody wanted is set to finish his regular season career as the Canada West's all-time leader in total digs (see Records, Page 4). With four more matches left, he's sitting at 977. The next closest player sits at 738 and no active player is even in the top 20 all-time. He's also 17 digs shy of the all-time single-season record of 258, a mark he will surely attain despite having played four fewer matches than the current record holder.
"I knew the numbers were high," says Bann whose team can clinch a playoff spot with a win tonight or Saturday, "but I had no idea that they were all-time records."
Bann in fact, is so far ahead of the rest of his competition, that when it comes to comparing the way he is able to use his defensive skills set to both thwart the opposition and initiate his team's offensive attack, Thunderbirds' head coach Richard Schick can't help but name two of the greatest team athletes ever.
"I always use the comparison, because most people don't know the game of volleyball very well, that you compare it to the way Gretzky saw the ice or Jordan saw the court," explains Schick. "He picks up on so many cues out there. His peripheral vision and his ability to read a play puts him in the right position. And it's a skill to be in the right place. The ball doesn't just come to him by accident."
Yet it was almost by accident that the 6-foot-1 Bann ended up at UBC.
Schick happened to be at the 2006 national Under-18 club championships in Abbotsford in the spring of 2006 when he bumped into Alberta team coach Greg Barthel, who recommended he look at Bann, a player with just one high school season as a libero under his belt.
Schick laughs at the story now because he suspects that Barthel, at the time also a head coach in the Alberta Collegiate Athletic Association, was simply trying to keep Bann away from a rival ACAA program. And as coincidences would have it, Barthel will be at War Memorial Gym this weekend because he is now the head coach of the Regina program.
But Bann himself admits that all of that happenstance has converged quite nicely.
"I wasn't highly recruited at all," says the human kinetics major who has twice been named the CIS' top libero, the same honour he's received three times in the Canada West. "But I just wanted to keep playing after high school. I had expectations for myself, but this has definitely exceeded all of that. I think that being able to play so much in my first year here really helped."
It was as a rookie in that 2006-07 that Bann immediately grabbed the starting libero's spot. He not only helped that UBC team to the first of back-to-back CIS national championship appearances that season, breaking a dryspell of 18 years, but he has since gone on to become the program's ironman. Heading into play tonight, Bann has yet to miss a match, playing in all 413 of the T-Birds conference and playoff sets.
And Schick will no doubt shed a tear tonight as both Bann and fellow senior Ryan Zwarich are honoured. The UBC women, currently ranked No. 1 in Canada and set to face Regina in the first of back-to-back 6 p.m. starts this weekend, will likewise honour fifth-year senior Jen Hinze and Lauren Whitehead.
"Blair has just made everything look so easy because he just understands the game so well," sums Schick. "And when you're most skilled athlete and your hardest worker happen to be the same athlete, you're pretty lucky. For his position, and his package of passing, defence and overall skill, I think Blair is one of the best in the world."
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