It’s no wonder that Capilano University volleyball players Simon and Ben Friesen share an uncanny connection when they are on the court – they’ve been working alongside each other since before they were born.
After spending four years as opponents in the PacWest league – Simon as the ace setter for Capilano, with Ben pounding away as an outside hitter for the University of the Fraser Valley – the twin brothers have reunited for one final season of college volleyball. And so far, the Blues brothers are putting on a pretty good show. Capilano is 7-3, third in the PacWest league, and Ben is first on the team in digs and second in kills, with most of those hits coming off of plays set up by Simon, who last year earned the CCAA national player of the year award.
“It’s great to play with a setter of that level and that technical ability and tactical ability as well,” said Ben. “It helps a little bit that we are twins. I kind of understand what he’s going to do even before he does it sometimes.”
The brothers have volleyball in the blood. Their parents, in fact, met on a volleyball court while playing in a co-ed league in Prince George.
“My mom rolled her ankle on my dad’s foot underneath the net,” said Ben with a laugh. Out of that twist of fate came Simon and Ben, who are fraternal twins but are very similar in interests, appearance and personality, although both offer that Simon is the more competitive of the two when it comes to activities like their table tennis grudge matches.
In their hometown of Abbotsford the boys grew to love volleyball under the tutelage of school and club coaches like Jeff Gamache and Duncan Harrison. By the end of their Grade 12 year at Abbotsford’s Mennonite Educational Institute, however, the two were ready to head in different directions.
“Seeing each other every day in practice, it kind of made sense for us to go our separate ways and figure out who we were individually as players,” said Ben.
Ben stayed close to home to go to UFV while Simon made for the North Shore to join the Blues. They were at different schools but in the same league, meaning they went head-to-head several times a season. And in those meetings, simmering sibling rivalries – another trait they shared since birth – would bubble to the surface. With Simon playing setter and Ben left-side hitter, they often found themselves face-to-face at the net, tasked with trying to block each other’s attacks.
“It was always a lot of fun to try to play against him, and I think our teams knew that there was a lot of competition there so they always tried to, I guess, rile us up a little bit,” said Simon. “They encouraged the competition, I’ll say that.”
After a few years apart, the Friesen family started musing about a reunion, but it didn’t happen until the fifth and final year for both players, spurred on by a coaching change on Ben’s old team. This summer Simon suggested his brother might like a change of scenery, prompting Ben to get in touch with Capilano head coach Dave Dooley, who happily brought him to the Blues.
The brothers now live in the same house with a couple other players on the team, and, aside from the odd ping pong flare-up, that sibling rivalry has been rechanneled and unleashed on the rest of the league.
“It’s competitive still between us because we want to be the best player,” said Simon. “[But] it’s less at each other’s throats, it’s focused on building each other up this year.”
Their parents are calling it a victory lap – one final season, shared together.
“It’s really obvious that Simon has really grown as a player and as a leader,” said Ben, adding that things have changed a lot since high school. “It’s really an ideal situation. We’ve both developed into our own players over the past four years and really honed our skills and gotten a lot better. It’s really nice to see that come together. In high school we weren’t, honestly, that great, so it’s kind of nice to be able to put it all together at the end.”
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One surefire way to tell the brothers apart in recent years was to check the facial hair: Simon was always clean shaven while Ben liked to sport a beard. That changed at the start of November, however, as the entire team wiped their slates clean to do a group Movember fundraising campaign. Click here to see the team's moustache progress and contribute to their fundraising efforts.
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The Blues are on the road for a pair of matchups against Columbia Bible College this weekend before returning home for one more match before the Christmas break, a Nov. 29 meeting against Ben’s old team, UFV.
