{"id":11734,"date":"2015-08-26T16:50:26","date_gmt":"2015-08-26T20:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=11734"},"modified":"2015-09-30T17:34:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T21:34:03","slug":"hall-of-famer-heese-finds-success-on-and-off-the-volleyball-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/hall-of-famer-heese-finds-success-on-and-off-the-volleyball-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall of Famer Heese finds success on and off the volleyball court"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark Heese doesn\u2019t take for granted the fact he was able to make a career out of his love for beach volleyball.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of those things where your job is your passion,\u201d he says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine doing anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heese takes that passion into the Aurora Sports Hall of Fame as the sole inductee into the \u201cAthletes\u201d category in the Class of 2015.<\/p>\n

Growing up in The Beaches area of Toronto, Heese and his wife packed up and moved to Aurora in 2001, after looking at a number of different places across the GTA. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur family was growing, so we needed a little bit of a bigger property and a bigger home, so we moved north to Aurora,\u201d said Heese. \u201cWe looked all around, east, west, north\u2026out of every community we checked out, we got the best feel for Aurora. And we certainly don\u2019t regret it today.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the fourteen years since the move, the Heeses have gone from a family of four to a family of six, a size Heese said would be difficult to raise in a Toronto suburb.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe even recently just added a dog,\u201d laughed Heese. \u201cJust to complete the chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heese quickly came into contact with Bruce Stafford, founder of Storm Volleyball and an ASHoF inductee in the class of 2014. He used sports, and his expertise, as a good way to get to know the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cEver since I came up I connected with the Storm because I thought it was an easy tie-in with connecting to the schools, club teams, and volleyball programs in the area. Over the years I started coming and visiting the teams more often.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his children following in his footsteps in the sand, that involvement has grown more and more over the years. When the oldest of Heese\u2019s four was about twelve, he became directly involved in coaching with the Storm, now in his fifth year.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s now followed his son all the way up to the 18U level, and is an assistant coach with his youngest son in the 13U age group. At times, he\u2019s helped out as an assistant for his daughter Kayla\u2019s teams as well.<\/p>\n

Aside from his volunteer work with the Storm, Heese maintains volleyball is not only his passion, but his full-time career \u2013 although it wasn\u2019t always that way.<\/p>\n

A year out of university, Heese took a position as a Phys. Ed. teacher before he was given the opportunity to represent Canada in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. There, he and partner John Child took home the bronze medal, the first Canadians to do so in the sport\u2019s inaugural Games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI figured I\u2019d go back (to teaching) after the \u201996 Olympics, but when we won bronze, the Tour exploded to sixteen or seventeen tournaments a year. It gave me an opportunity to be a full-time professional.\u201d<\/p>\n

He spent the next seventeen years on tour, retiring at the age of 39 in 2008. He had thoughts of going back to teaching, even testing the waters at Country Day School in King as a substitute teacher, but his passions remained on the beach.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just didn\u2019t appeal to me after playing volleyball for so long, being self-employed and managing my own time\u2026I decided to try to continue in the volleyball scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

A number of hats must be worn to make a living in a fringe sport, and Heese went on to do so. He has done coaching with the national teams, in London in 2012, and most recently at the Pan Am Games in Toronto. He hopes to continue at the Rio Olympics in 2016. <\/p>\n

He runs his own volleyball program in Toronto during the summer as well, and does some motivational speaking, but his main gig is working with volleyball brands, such as clothing sponsor Overkill.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt runs through my blood, it\u2019s my passion. To walk away from volleyball wouldn\u2019t seem right.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked how it feels to add his name to the best in athletics in Aurora\u2019s history, Heese said he\u2019s honoured by the recognition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWinning an Olympic medal is almost every kid around the world\u2019s dream. I know it was mine. It\u2019s an accomplishment on the court, while the Hall of Fame is one off the court. The recognition comes with the accomplishment, and I\u2019m not sure without the Olympics I would be nominated, but I\u2019m happy with the honour.\u201d <\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Heese doesn\u2019t take for granted the fact he was able to make a career out of his love for beach volleyball.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of those things where your job is your passion,\u201d he says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine doing anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/2015-08-27-12.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-33g","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 01:13:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}