Emily Canaan Serves Out Final Season With Gators Volleyball
Senior defensive specialist Emily Canaan joined her coach on “The Ryan Theis Show on WRUF” Tuesday night. Amid preparing to face Texas A&M on Wednesday at 7 p.m., Canaan discussed her time with Florida volleyball following senior night against Texas on Friday.
“They’re very emotional for me at least, as well as my family,” Canaan said. “Thinking of like these are my last everythings. This is my last get ready before the game, this is one of my last everything, so that aspect of trying to cherish every moment with my teammates because I don’t have another year.”
Now in her fourth and final year in Gainesville, Canaan is from Allen, Texas, where she played for Allen High School in addition to her club squad and the USA National Team. She said that she saw familiar faces against the Longhorns and knows just about the entire starting lineup for Texas A&M.
This season, Canaan recorded a season-high 12 digs in the four-set loss at South Carolina on Nov. 2. She now has 140 digs this season and 659 in her career.
She looks to add to that against the Aggies on Wednesday and Ole Miss on Friday ahead of the SEC Tournament, which is back for the first time in 20 years on Nov. 21.
Looking back at the start, she credits her commitment to UF to former coach Mary Wise and the teammates she would play alongside, including setter Alexis Stucky. The Gators won 12 tournament titles under Wise, including the last one in 2005.
“(Florida’s) always had a legacy of teams who have won, and Mary Wise did a really great job of recruiting me here,” Canaan said. “Just wanting to be a part of that legacy as well.”
The Gators maintained four out of the original five in this 2025 graduating class, an impressive achievement in this era of the transfer portal and NIL. Now, Theis runs this program after 17 seasons at the helm of Ohio and Marquette, hoping that his current Florida players will reach back out for help down the line, even in such a short period of time.
“It was a pretty quick turnaround, but Ryan did a great job of wanting us to get after it and buy into the program, and I think we all did a really good job of doing that,” Canaan said.
Many asked why senior night was not the last home match of the season on Nov. 29 against North Florida. Canaan, who’s known on the team as “Pickle,” said that she initiated the conversation about moving the game earlier because of complicated and expensive travel the weekend after Thanksgiving, which is football’s last home football game against Florida State in the season finale.
Theis and Canaan both agreed if a back-row player had to step up to play up front in a pinch, it would be sophomore Bella Lee. Canaan admitted that her fellow defensive specialist stuff blocked her two or three times when practicing attacking and blocking against each other at the end of practices. Theis awarded the back row as the deepest group, as he has done all season.
“They are the best of teammates and the hardest workers, I would say,” Canaan said. “Talking about Ella Vogel, Bella Lee and Lily Hayes, they’ve all been awesome teammates no matter what role people are in, so it kind of just keeps the competitive juices in practice, day in and day out, because there truly is, to us, no starting lineup because it could be any one of us any given day.”
Category: Gator Sports, Gators Volleyball, NCAA, SEC, Volleyball
