It’s induction week at the International Volleyball Hall of Fame in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The ceremony is Saturday. Six inductees will join the previous 161 players, coaches, administrators and leaders from 25 countries who have already been enshrined in the museum at the birthplace of volleyball. We have stories on all six, continuing with Shanrit Wongprasert of Thailand:
How far has volleyball come in Thailand? Just look at who did NOT make the direct entry 12-team main draw for this past August’s prestigious fully-loaded Beach Pro Tour Elite16 Hamburg.
Olympic medalists Laura Ludwig, Chen Xue, Anouk Verge Depre and Joana Mader were relegated to the qualifier. Meanwhile fully half of the main draw constituted teams from beach royalty, Brazil and the USA. But who else made it into that main draw looking like party crashers?
Thailand’s Taravadee Naraphornrapat and partner Worapeerachayakorn Kongphopsarutawadee, that’s who.
Much of this sort of advancement in both the indoor and beach versions of the sport in Asia in general, and Thailand in particular, can be attributed to the impact of Shanrit Wongprasert, the first International Volleyball Hall of Fame inductee to ever come from the Southeast Asian country
“I was so surprised because I never thought that my volleyball voluntary work would be recognized by the International Volleyball Hall of Fame,” Wongprasert said.
“It is the greatest honor of my life.”
Wongprasert has done everything in his life at a high level.
Born on December 16, 1943, in Ban Pong District in Ratchaburi, Thailand, the 79-year-old started playing in a nine-man system in middle school as a digger of the third row. In high school, in a more traditional six-player configuration, he was an outside hitter. While on the Thai national team Wongprasert was a setter.
Having sufficiently caught the volleyball “bug,” Wongprasert stayed in the sport, becoming at first a coach, at the university, club and finally women’s national-team levels. But it is as an administrator where Wongprasert has made such an enormous impact.
Consider he has been anointed as Honorary Life President of not one, but two organizations, the Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) and the Thailand Volleyball Association (TVA).
The reason for all of these accolades? Wongprasert in his various roles helped develop volleyball in Thailand from a “few local championships a year, with few…
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