End of an era - Jelte Maan retires after 13 years spent with Maaseik

About a month after turning 35, Jelte Maan – born on March 19, 1986 in Lochem, the Netherlands – has decided to end his outstanding Volleyball career.

Jelte came under the radar of Noliko MAASEIK thanks to his performances in the Dutch national league, more specifically while playing for the team from Apeldoorn. In 2008, Vital Heynen lured him to join Maaseik. In the jubilee book ‘Maaseik, 60 jaar topvolleybal’, Jelte tells about his almost failed entrance at Maaseik: how he – optimum focus on a very important away game – refuelled his diesel club car with gasoline. A false start for a stunning success story!  

Some remarkable figures: during his 13 seasons with Maaseik, he played 562 matches: 408 wins, that is 72.5% or cum laude! During the Maan era, Noliko / Greenyard MAASEIK won five league titles, four cups, five Supercups and two European bronze medals. Jelte experienced 13 European campaigns with Maaseik, 95 matches in total (97 if you include the two fixtures with CHAUMONT VB 52 cancelled earlier this season due to coronavirus restrictions). If you also add his four European campaigns with Apeldoorn, he ends up with a tally of as many as 111 European matches!

In between, Jelte collected some 200 caps for the Dutch national team. Do not even try to count his number of ‘star of the game’ distinctions. Especially his individual MVP trophy after that crazy 3-2 win against Zenit KAZAN (December 2019) will stay on his mind until the end of days! He became Player of the Year in 2012, when Maaseik won all prizes in Belgium and surprised Europe, again. The fan club then awarded him their prize too. There are no figures about his yellow cards: as a captain of his team, he was always at the forefront of the fight, indeed. He demanded the utmost from himself, from his fellow players AND from the referees. They sometimes saw him rushing like a roaring bull when he disagreed with them about their judgment.

Jelte had to fight back several times after a serious injury: we remember an ankle and that slipped disc, and even last summer many feared that it might not work out, but 2020/2021 turned out to be by no means the infamous ‘season too much’. Yet, it stops here and now... From now on Jelte will fully focus on his business. All Volleyball fans in Belgium, not only in Maaseik and in surroundings but across the country as well, will of course remember Jelte Maan for his fighting spirit and energy in the arena when the stakes were high.

It is a pity that such a great career ends so unexpectedly without a final prize, without the fans, and without a public tribute. Despite the kick that Jelte Maan always felt from the adrenaline on the pitch and the atmosphere in the stands, he prefers to retire without much ado, just say goodbye quietly to the inner circle. However, as a club Maaseik cannot and will never let him disappear like that, unnoticed: just wait and see! 13 years, solid as a rock: for that reason alone, a place in the all-time dream team cannot escape him. Anyway, thank you very, very much for everything, Jelte! Best wishes and we will definitely see each other again!