Northwest's Hannah Hanson has been named the 2015-16 Les Schwab Champions of Character award winner. 

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.