Jung Ahn

This is a Korean name; the family name is Ahn.

Ahn Jung-Hyun

Born	Ahn Jung-Hyun (1993-08-20) 20 August 1993^[1] Haeundae, Busan, KOR
Height	1.85 m (6 ft 1 in)
Weight	86 kg (190 lb; 13 st 8 lb)
Position	Left Wing / Defence
Shoots	Left
ALH team	Anyang Halla
National team	South Korea
Playing career	2012–present

Ahn Jung-Hyun (Korean: 안정현; born 20 August 1993), also known as Jung Ahn, is a Korean-Canadian professional ice hockey player.^[1] He currently plays for Anyang Halla of the ALH and the South Korea men's national ice hockey team.

Early life

Ahn was born to a student family in Haeundae, Busan, South Korea. He moved to Vancouver, British Columbia along with his parents who had made the decision to study abroad when he was one and a half years old.^[2] After his family had become the victim of a serial scammer who targeted newly landed immigrants, they moved to Edmonton, Alberta in an attempt to stabilize financially. Until his latter adolescence, Ahn lived in a university funded housing unit. While residing in a neighborhood with a large African-Canadian community, he became close friends with a Ghanaian immigrant who gave him the nickname "Henny" after not being able to pronounce the second part of Ahn’s Korean given name: "Hyun”. Upon entering middle school, Ahn chose to simplify his name to “Jung Ahn” from “Jung-Hyun Ahn” in an attempt to ease the difficulty that his teachers and coaches had in pronouncing his name.

Ahn discovered ice hockey on a frozen patch of ice behind his community’s Laundromat at the age of three. He found his first pair of skates in a donation bin and his first set of equipment was handed down to him by a Japanese immigrant family whose son had recently quit organized hockey. He was registered in organized hockey on his fifth birthday. Ahn’s father worked part-time as a janitor and his mother as a hotel cashier, both while enrolled at the University of Alberta, in order to support their son’s participation in competitive sports.^[2]

Junior career

Ahn spent three seasons playing junior hockey in Canada. After his family had moved from Alberta to British Columbia due to his parents' work, Ahn played one season in the KIJHL for the Sicamous Eagles where he was selected to play in the KIJHL All-Star game. The next season, he chose to pursue the junior "A" route in order to maintain his NCAA eligibility although he had been invited to several major junior main camps and consistently drew attention from Western Hockey League clubs as a youth since his inclusion in the Team Alberta development program. Ahn suffered two ankle breaks and a severe knee injury which sidelined his junior A career to only a handful of games over the course of two seasons. During the process of injury and rehabilitation, he was traded several times within the CJHL.

Professional career

Anyang Halla

After returning to full fitness, Ahn had the choice of either returning to play junior "A" in Canada and pursuing an athletic scholarship or signing with Anyang Halla of the ALH who had scouted him in the previous summer and had given him a standing offer based solely on the fact that he carried a great deal of untapped potential, despite the club coming under heavy criticism for taking a large risk on a relatively unproven player. Ahn decided to sign with Halla in December 2012, giving up his college eligibility. At barely 19 years of age, Ahn became Halla's youngest signing in franchise history and the youngest Korean player to play in the ALH. ^[3]

Ahn made his professional debut with Halla in a 13-0 drubbing of China Dragon where he recorded an assist and 14 penalty minutes.^[3]

Kiekko-Vantaa

Ahn played the 2013-2014 season with Kiekko-Vantaa in the Finnish Mestis league.

International play

Ahn made his international debut for South Korea in a 3-2 loss against Vyacheslav Bykov's Poland men's national ice hockey team at the IIHF sanctioned 2013 Euro Ice Hockey Challenge in Tychy, Poland.^[4]

He became the youngest goal scorer in a senior IIHF sanctioned competition in South Korean national team history when he capitalized on a rebound during a 4-3 victory over Romania at the same competition.^[4]^[5]

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 28, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.