Angelena Dolezar

Angelena Dolezar wears number 7 and plays the position of defensive libero for the Canadian women’s sitting volleyball team. Dolezar has been a member of the team since 2015. She attended the 2019 and 2015 Para Pan Am Games, 2018 world championship, 2017 Parapan Am zonal championship and 2016 Paralympic Games. 

In 2015 at the Toronto Parapan Am Games, Canada won bronze earning a berth for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio; the first time in history a Canadian sitting volleyball team qualified for the Paralympic Games. 

Dolezar grew up playing competitive soccer. She played on her high school team at Paul Kane High School, in her hometown of St. Albert, AB. After graduating high school in 2006, she joined a premier level soccer league in Edmonton. Dolezar continued to play competitively until the summer of 2013. 

In 2008, Dolezar graduated from the University of Alberta with a bachelor of science; majoring in biology and minoring in French literature. In 2012, she again graduated from the University of Alberta, this time with an education degree. 

In August 2013, Dolezar was in a tubing accident while at a cottage with some friends. She had released one hand from the tube to tell the boat driver to slow down. The signal was not seen, and the driver turned a corner, resulting in her being flung from the tube and into the wake. Dolezar’s body went one way, and her left leg went the other, resulting in a dislocated knee, fractured tibia, severed popliteal artery behind her knee and internal bleeding in her leg. Although the doctors did all they could to save her leg, in the end, the decision was made to amputate her left leg above the knee. 

Dolezar was in the hospital for six months recovering. She was the first person in Canada to receive osteointegration, and in 2015 was the first person in Canada to purchase a bionic leg. 

Dolezar was living in Edmonton (where Canada’s women’s sitting volleyball team practices) at the time of her accident and post-recovery. Through the grapevine, Nicole Ban; current women’s sitting volleyball head couch, heard that Dolezar had been a competitive athlete before her accident. In 2015, Ban reached out to Dolezar, asking if she would be interested in playing sitting volleyball. Dolezar had been missing the team atmosphere that soccer used to provide to her, so she decided to give it a try. She has remained a member of the team since. 

Currently Dolezar is a French immersion teacher in the Edmonton public school board. She plans to return to the University of Alberta in the fall of 2021 to begin her master’s in education and counselling.