Braden McLean

Braden McLean is a volleyball globetrotter. Along with being a dominant force in the middle for the Huskies men’s volleyball team for the last three years, he has been playing for Canada in international tournaments.

“I’ve been all over the place and it’s been pretty cool,” McLean said.

It started in August of 2011, McLean’s first leap across nations to play volleyball. He helped lead the Canadian Junior men’s team to an 11th place finish at the World Junior Championships in Brazil.

“We were all pretty young and hadn’t travelled much yet,” McLean said. “We had a few farmboys on the team, and for them going out and seeing the ocean for the first time was like bringing kids to a candy store.”

McLean turned 21 this past summer and was no longer eligible to compete as a junior, so he made the transition to the Canadian men’s Senior B team. The team trains to compete in the Fédération internationale du sport universitaire (FISU), an international tournament for university athletes. The FISU games are played every two years, with the next one scheduled for Kazan, Russia in 2013.

Because there were no FISU games this past summer, McLean and the rest of the Senior B squad travelled to the Dominican Republic to compete in the 2012 Pan Am Cup. The team went toe-to-toe with national teams from Argentina, Mexico, Dominican Republic and eventually Brazil, who knocked them out of the quarter finals.

Now entering his fourth year with the Huskies, McLean checked off another country when the Dogs went to Japan for a pre-season training trip at the beginning of September.

“It was so much fun. Learning through the new experiences, the new culture and everything else Japan offered us was immense for the team’s growth.”

McLean, a Birch Hills, Sask. native has no intentions to stop travelling. He says he will try out for the national team again next year in hopes of competing at the Russian FISU games.

McLean is currently studying kinesiology but admits that if he gets the chance to play professional volleyball after university he would jump at the opportunity.

“When I’m done my five years here I’ll try to go pro over in Europe.”

Professional volleyball would allow the six-foot-nine middle blocker to keep playing the sport he loves, but also keep him travelling: to play in a professional volleyball league McLean would likely have to move overseas.

“Professional volleyball doesn’t happen here in North America, but in South America, Europe and Asia it is quite popular and I would love to take advantage of that… and play volleyball as long as I can.”

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Photo: Raisa Pezderic/The Sheaf