Hanson and Raney Earn Les Schwab Champions of Character Awards
LA GRANDE, Ore. – Northwest University’s Hannah Hanson and Kieren Raney have been named the recipients of the 2016 Les Schwab Champions of Character Award, the conference office announced.
Hanson, a junior volleyball player from Tenino Wash., began working as a member of a leadership group with Team IMPACT, a group involved in matching children with mental or physical illnesses with a local college athletic team. The children are "drafted" by a team and remain with the team from "Draft Day" through graduation.
Through this relationship, the children gain great strength, camaraderie and support and the student athletes are taught lessons about courage, resiliency and life perspective that they can’t learn in a classroom.
Hanson has also traveled to Africa on a two week mission/medical/teaching trip. There, she worked with children from sunrise to sundown to help improve their quality of life.
In spring, Hanson made a mission trip with the NU volleyball team to Nicaragua, where she took part in classes to help teach Nicaraguan children English and was a coach at a sitting volleyball camp, one of the first in the country aimed at teaching the game to disabled athletes.
The trips also allowed the team play against and establish a relationship with the Nicaraguan national volleyball team. Hanson departed May 16 for China where she spends time in the classroom and given an opportunity to teach for several weeks this summer.
This marks the second year in a row that Raney, a junior on NU’s soccer team, has won the Champions of Character award. A native of Snohomish, Wash., Raney spends his semester, spring and summer breaks as a part of Adventure Soccer, a faith-based organization founded by his father Matt, and involves the entire Raney family. Their travels take them to Swaziland in Africa and the curriculum of their soccer camps emphasizes sportsmanship, team play and integrity in every participant as well as developing the technical side of soccer in each player.
He will also work with several high schools in Swaziland and an orphanage to help direct the youth in a positive direction in their lives.
His group also partners directly with Leadership for Africa in the operation of The Sandra Lee Centre Orphanage, a home for rescued and abandoned children. In addition, Adventure Soccer builds Carepoint Feeding Stations to help provide food for orphan and needy children. Soccer camps are used to identify children in need and organize soccer teams in order to teach, disciple and mentor the children.
This summer Raney will travel to Yakima, Wash., with Adventure soccer to do outreach in the urban areas to raise awareness of gang violence. He will be working with people who have experienced life with gangs and the affect they have on the community. He will follow the outreach work with working a running camp in Snohomish teaching children the qualities of teamwork and other positive character attributes.