The last weekend of January, we were in Austin, Texas, for a unique NCAA men’s volleyball gathering, with Hawai’i, Stanford, Fairleigh Dickinson and Queens.
Once-unbeaten Hawai’i had a tough start to that road trip, losing back-to-back matches a few days earlier at Ball State while missing four players, including setter Jakob Thelle.
During the first match in Austin — while the Rainbow Warriors were sweeping FDU and Thelle was collecting five kills in seven tries with one error, four aces, a block and a dig — veteran Hawai’i coach Charlie Wade looked over and said simply, “I’m a way better coach when Jakob Thelle is on the floor.”
Indeed he is, because the 6-foot-6 Thelle, a junior from Tonsberg, Norway, can be a one-man wrecking crew.
His serve — he leads the nation at .667 aces per set — is vicious. He’s left-handed and sometimes doesn’t even bother to disguise that he’s going to blast the second ball instead of setting. He’s averaging .73 kills/set and hitting .407.
And did we mention that he’s from Norway?
Yes, Norway, the same wintry country that borders the top of the world and boasts the reigning Olympics beach gold medalists in Anders Mol and Christian Sorum. Thelle is not even the first big-time player at Hawai’i from Norway. Mol’s brother, Hendrik, was a Rainbow Warrior. Long Beach State has had a Norwegian, too, Bjarne Huus.
It was Hendrik Mol, who played at Hawai’i from 2014-17, who told Wade about Thelle.
“Hendrik sent me video of him when he was still in high school,” Wade said. “And I know Hendrik, he’s very much a Viking, and knowing that mentality, he would not take the time to press send if he didn’t think he would help.”
Thelle was mostly a serving specialist as a freshman in 2019 when Hawai’i had an All-American setter in Joe Worsley and lost to Long Beach State in the national-championship match. “I tried to learn what I could from him and the coaches,” Thelle said.
In the abbreviated 2020 season, he started about half the matches. But when the pandemic got into full swing, the season was canceled, and Hawai’i moved all classes to online. Thelle went home to Norway for almost a year.
For the fall of 2020, he went to class, so to speak, by Zoom. He didn’t go back to Hawai’i until January 2021, with the first matches in February. And going to class in Norway when your school is in Hawai’i is tough.
“From about 10 p.m. to about 3 a.m.,” Thelle said with a smile. “And I was working as a substitute teacher at an elementary school from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. It was a fun experience.”
And then last year, Thelle ran the show for the national champions, who led the nation in kills.
“There was a still a lot of uncertainty,” Thelle said. “We didn’t even know we were going to play until the week before … Finally we got the green light.”
And the Rainbow Warriors never looked back.
Hawai’i finished the season 17-1, including 10-0 in the Big West, and the only loss was to UC San Diego in the Big West Tournament. The Rainbow Warriors got an at-large bid to the NCAA Championship and swept UC Santa Barbara in the semifinals before sweeping BYU in the title match. In the final, Thelle had two kills in four errorless tries, 36 assists, four aces, a block and three digs, and his team hit .381.
“Last year was special, for sure,” Thelle said.
This season, Hawai’i is 18-3, including 3-1 in the Big West, and is No. 4 in this week’s AVCA poll. The Rainbow Warriors play at No. 2 Long Beach State (14-3, 3-1) on Friday and Saturday nights in what should be two big-time men’s matches between the most recent NCAA champions. Long Beach State won it all in 2018 and 2019 and no champion was crowned in 2020.
Thelle is hardly Hawai’i’s only weapon. Two Greeks — sophomore Spyros Chakas (3.23/set, .340) and sophomore Dimitrios Mouchlias (3.29/set, .348) — lead in kills, and sophomore Brazilian Guilherme Voss adds 1.75 kills and leads with 82 blocks, 16 solo, and tops the nation at 1.439 blocks/set.
Thelle’s father, Henrik, is Danish and played volleyball. Jakob was born in Norway, and growing up, he played soccer, team handball and beach volleyball, ran track and cross-country skied. He was about 12 and only about 5-foot-6 when he started playing volleyball. His father was his first volleyball coach, and another Norwegian, Asbjorn (Ozzie) Volstad, who won two national championships at UCLA, was an influence.
But there’s this whole Norwegian volleyball thing going on, and it all goes back to the Mol family.
Wade said on his recruiting trip, after his flight into Norway, “you get on a ferry and go like two hours through the fjords and there’s a small town called, ironically, Sand, Norway.”
And that’s where Kare and Merita Mol, who were both standout beach volleyball players in Norway, have ToppVolley. Merita Mol, formerly Merita Berntsen, finished ninth at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta with Ragni Hestad. As Wade described it, “they live there, train there, go to school there.”
Thelle went to ToppVolley when he was 15, moving an eight-hour-drive away from his family to be immersed into volleyball.
Anders Mol was a senior when Thelle was a freshman. Thelle’s sister, Helene, is a product of ToppVolley and was a libero indoors at FIU from 2016-2019 and played some beach there.
Jakob Thelle was paying attention.
“I spoke to Hendrik when he came back in 2018 and was a coach at (ToppVolley). He told me about Hawai’i, and I thought, ‘This sounds like a dream.’ I really wanted to go there, and the rest is history, ”
Thelle, 22, is majoring in environmental science, will most likely graduate this spring and will play one more season for Hawai’i. He said he’d like to ultimately be an environmental engineer and live in Norway, but there’s still a lot of volleyball to be played. He has been on the Norwegian national indoor and beach teams and certainly will play professionally.
“I want to be as good as I possibly can be indoor, and then I will probably play on the beach after,” Thelle said.
In the meantime, he’s living the dream in Hawai’i, riding his bike to practice — try doing that in Norway in the winter — and playing for a program that competes in a sold-out arena, COVID willing.
“The Hawai’i fans are special. I may be biased, but I think Hawai’i is the best place to play volleyball in the world,” Thelle said. “The fanbase is so committed and invested in the program. Everybody cares about you. I go to the grocery story, and people recognize me and ask to take a picture.
“You almost get like superstar status in Hawai’i.”
This season, Hawai’i is certainly expected to be in the national-championship chase, with No. 1 UCLA, Long Beach and No. 3 Penn State.
You don’t win it all without a big-time setter. Thelle, by the way, missed that Ball State series because he tested positive for COVID — with no symptoms — so he couldn’t leave with the team. He got the OK a few days later and met the team in Austin.
Hawai’i put together a nine-match winning streak that started in Texas, but then lost in five at UC San Diego on March 2. Two days later, Hawai’i swept the Tritons and have won four since. After this week, UH returns home for UC Santa Barbara, goes to UC Irvine, and then is the home team for the Big West Tournament from April 21-23.
Look for the setter from Norway to lead the way.
“His development has been really impressive,” Wade said, adding that he thinks Thelle is a player-of-the-year candidate.
“I can’t remember a player in college volleyball that has his skill set, who can do the number of things he can do on the court,” Wade said. “I really can’t.”
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