Shark bite-surviving ex-UCLA volleyball star…
From shark chunk to Olympic highlight.
Hagen Smith, a Pacific Palisades native and an ex-UCLA volleyball setter, told The California Post last week he’s made it his mission to have precisely that on his resume.
Smith’s foot was snared by an ocean predator roughly a decade and a half in the past, when he was 15, after he had taken a dip in the water at Dockweiler Beach in Los Angeles following a volleyball match.
Hagen Smith was bitten by a shark a few years before he grew to become a UCLA volleyball star. AVP
Initially, he said he thought he was attacked by a stingray, but once he escaped to a close by lifegaurd tower, he observed blood “everywhere,” and realized it one thing far more aggressive that received him.
“I got cut up,” he said, “bit all over across my toes and a little bit on my foot. “
Smith needed around 20-30 stitches to close the injuries, and while he was shaken up, he went on to make a full recovery.
He starred for the Bruins just a few years after the incident, and following commencement, he grew to become a family title in the AVP.
But now he’s hoping the next milestone stop in his journey from surviving an encounter with a shark is the Olympics.
Hagen Smith is hoping to make the United States’ Olympic seashore volleyball workforce in 2028. AVP
“For our sport in the last two decades,” the 31-year-old said, “that’s been the pinnacle of beach volleyball.”
The Olympics have always been important to Smith, as his father, UCLA volleyball legend Sinjin Smith, represented the United States in the 1996 Games.
But with the motion slated to come close to his yard in Long Beach in 2028, he said his want to be half of America’s workforce has only grown additional.
“It’s been a dream of mine since I can remember,” Hagen said. “My dad, being who he is, what he’s done for the sport and being in the first Olympics, it’s always been that dream, that goal of mine.”
Hagen Smith has been one of the AVP’s greatest stars in latest years. AVP
There are a number of routes Hagen can take to earn a spot on the US roster — but most contain him profitable a bunch on the worldwide circuit over the next two years.
“There’s a long way to go,” he said. “But that is the ultimate goal.”
Smith doesn’t have a accomplice that he needs to make his run to the Olympics with just yet, although he’s hoping to appeal to one soon — maybe even this weekend, when he and other professional volleyball stars will play at the same location that will host seashore volleyball at the 28 Games.
AVP League will formally stop at Alamitos Beach in Long Beach on July 11-12, and while Smith’s precedence is to file some wins for his LA Launch squad, he said the Olympics might be on his thoughts.
“It’ll be cool to be the test run for the Olympics,” he said. “That’ll be a good opportunity for us to see how it plays down there.”
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