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30 for 30 (another VB anniversary post)
30 years is a long time…I remember being 15 last week and yesterday I was 30 and now…well, I’m not 30. Still, I’ve been in love now for 30 years–both with (now) Mrs. Dietz and with volleyball. Thank goodness Mrs. Dietz puts up with the long-time mistress (volleyball you knuckleheads) like she does!
So I saw an ad on ESPN for their documentary series they started long ago now ’30 for 30′. It got me thinking. Then someone in a volleyball forum mentioned the dread ’30 under 30′ award (pretty much guaranteed to kill a career dead–or the nominator’s money back). And that brings us to…
My list of 30 people in volleyball I love. They are in no particular order. There are others. If you aren’t listed, I still love you.
Jim Stone. I learned so much about coaching from him. Even now when I get to talk to him, I learn new pearls of wisdom about the sport–but I also love talking politics or sports with him and I’ll never forget the ’93 loss to Purdue and driving back with him separate and playing ‘Name that Tune’ from Lafayette back to Columbus…the man knows his 70s album rock. I also learned the importance of finding good restaurants for team meals from him (something Gregg Popovich stole from Jim–and me).
Laura Davis. Hardest working volleyball player I’ve ever known.
Beth Bushur. Hardest working HS player I coached. Toughest, too.
Jody Kapper. Best natural leader I’ve coached. No one crossed her path–not the team and not male athletes either.
Emily Bergfeld. 5’7 middle who wound up playing D-2 ball–they asked her if she was an OH or DS…wouldn’t believe she’d been a middle. God did not bless Emily with the greatest athletic talent, but the Almighty blessed her with a work ethic and a ‘can do’ spirit. With Beth, Jody, and the rest of that 2000 team–it is the one squad I’ve had where I could still write the lineup sheet out today. (Serving order: 5-33-17-3-32-26/28)
Toby Harms. His school always tied his hands in terms of coaching until he lost his job when a co-op was formed. He coached my kids in club. I always appreciated he understood why sports were important for more than just the ‘great’ athletes. He busted his butt as a coach, still does so as a teacher. I hope students appreciate that. I do.
Andy Martin. Our assignor here at LLCC. Nice guy, understands the spirit of the game. If it’s a big match, I don’t have to worry–we’re going to have the best available officials.
Ron Riggle. My AD. I get the support I need regularly–more than a ton of coaches out there can say. I love when we have qualified for nationals that he comes along–but only in the role of fan/supporter and to help with logistics. The shock in 2012 when Kinzie Nielsen challenged him to ping-pong and he accepted and drilled her–awesome.
Carrie Leonard and Gabi Jobst. I’m cheating, but in VB terms, I have to put them together, the passing duo of outside hitters while I was at Ohio State. My goodness did they complain about passing stats–but I also suspected (and have found out since) that they loved being held to a high standard. My love of ‘ball-control’ oriented teams comes from these two.
I mentioned Ron in #8. I need to mention Matt Hensley here, my A.D. when I was a high school coach. He stood by me in all circumstances, including when I was let go. Eventually that became part of the reason he was let go. I’m in a better place as is he. He remains the best HS athletic director in Illinois…maybe the U.S.
Jessica Childress. The first HS kid I coached to go on to play at a NCAA D-1 school.
Tiffany Sunderlin. My assistant now, but this is for providing me with one of my favorite moments ever–knocking a kid unconscious on match point of our first match of 2015. I’ve never seen a more perfect connection than that set and she UNLOADED.
Kelly Wajda / Laura Payne / Tiffany. My alumni who have come back to be assistant coaches. My goal has always been for the program to be like family–so having alumni return to help gives me that sense–keeps me ‘in touch’ with what players think.
Claire Reinthaler. She kinda stunk the last match of her freshman season. When I pulled her, she said to herself she was happy to be out. Afterwards she told me–and vowed that would never happen again. As a soph, Claire wound up backing that promise up–Conference Player of the Year, All-American, and setting a record for hitting efficiency by a middle. Setting a goal, committing to it, succeeding. Love it.
Kiersten Anderson. She played for our club for 5 years, insisted she wanted to play D-1 only, but she was told at 5’11 1/2 she was too short. She wound up with us all-American twice, academic all-American twice, and all-National Tourney twice. She went on to be NAIA all-American, too. The funny thing–she never really led us in any one category…other than triple-doubles (kills-digs-assists). She has an argument for being ‘best ever’ at Lincoln Land, except…
Emily Orrick. Orrick was two-time all-American, went on to Illinois State where she was two time Missouri Valley Libero of the Year and was an AVCA all-American. As a libero, she was aced less than 40 times in 1,900 attempts…while running a two-person serve-receive (except for one opponent with a jerk for a coach–Emily ran a one-person against them). Our rival coaches agree “Emily is the best juco libero of all time.” If she’d played at a hoity-toity school, you’d know her.
Will Clawson. An assistant for only one year, he moved with his wife to Springfield to try out college coaching. It takes a lot in life to pack up and follow a dream to see if it is the right dream. I didn’t have that courage myself when I was younger–so I have mad respect for anyone who does what he did.
Kallie Sinkus. My assistant for two years–also known as Hannah Werth’s HS setter. She’s gone on to coach high school, but it really strokes my ego to know she took a ton of our concepts and what I do and implemented them with her team–while having the confidence to put her own spin on it all. Just as important, she took over a team that had had a jerk for a coach and was down to 14-15 athletes–and now has nearly 60 in the program.
Joe Reuben. He helped start a club with me. He coaches the Maccabi Games team for the US (won the gold two years ago, too). Only in America can the white son of German immigrants from a small town in Iowa become friends with an Indian Jew from London, England. A gentle soul, he will always go the extra mile to help young people.
Amber Stephens. She came on to club and learned to coach more even as she had to take on more paperwork duties–an administrative whiz who never tripped up even when she was faced with a series of crises in her personal life–along with managing the multiple sports interests of her children. Motherhood, career, coaching…it ain’t easy. I wish more parents appreciated coaches for that.
John Kessel. Back in 2011 at the AVCA convention, he kindly dumped about 40 links on me to articles on motor development and block/random training. If the guy in charge of USAV grassroots efforts thinks it’s good, I guess I can go along…we changed a ton of stuff. We went to Nationals. We’ve been there 5 of 7 years now…should’ve been 7, but that’s for a future rant, I suspect.
D.C. Koehl. D.C. was the long-time sports info guru for Ohio State men’s and women’s volleyball. He singlehandedly did the PR guides and work there for the VB teams–when all anyone else cared about was basketball and football…his knowledge of all things stats and Ohio State sports was incomparable.
Pete Hanson and Tim Embaugh. Ohio State’s men’s coaches, the guys who coached them to national titles. They put in 20+ years of hard work and earned their success. They did it with style and class. Except Tim…it’s hard to forget him in a white t-shirt over his head working summer camps going, “I am the great Cornholio.”
Linda Grensing. Weird ties in life. Her dad was the AD where my dad and step-father went to HS. Before going to Ohio State, she worked at Iowa State where I assisted after she left. Linda was always classy and a great role-model. I don’t think I’ve seen her since her wedding 20 years ago now, but I bet her daughters are turning out the same way as her.
Bobana Marusic. The only athlete our exercise physiologist, Kelly, could not wear out or break down. One of the first two (the only two actually) international students I brought in, she was all-conference and -region and academic all-American to boot. So was Maree. If all Serbian (and Australian) women are like them, those nations will be in good hands for the foreseeable future.
Jim Hunstein. With USAV HP, he worked with my daughter and treated her with respect even though she was young and new–much more than she got from other coaches she worked with. I anjoyed coaching against him, but prefer it now where he’s at a four-year school and we are co-directors of the Bald Guy Coaching Alliance.
Twin City Volleyball. Mike Deterding and Craig Jones. They allowed me to coach back in 95-96 when I wasn’t sure how to get back in to coaching after getting married and becoming a dad. Coaching for them led to the chain of events that brought me to LLCC.
Morgan Hauser. As a player, she hated me. We butt heads some–but when she moved to play on, she understood my decisions better. I hired her as a club coach–she was awesome. She moved on to do a grad ass’t position and is now in her first year as a college head coach.
Anna Becker. I loved you standing up for a teammate I was tossing off the team and your comment during our discussion: “I hate that you are rational. Worse, you’re @#%@#% right.” You should’ve been all-American and I hate that coaches pulling shenanigans prevented that.
Liang Yao. Yao was at Ohio State and we’d always room together on roadtrips. I don’t think Jim Stone ever realized how tired we would be before matches or that after the morning 1-hr practice we were always taking short catnaps. That’d be because we’d be staying up until 5am watching TBS’ movie marathons like “10 Days of the Duke” or the “Clint Eastwood Weekend.” I remember a coaches dinner at a Chinese restaurant where Yao did all the ordering–what I hadn’t realized was he’d trained as a youth to be a chef…and didn’t want the kitchen to take shortcuts because the rest of us were Americans. I haven’t seen Yao since 1994, but a picture of him and me remains in my office. Good times.
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