Set for success
Volleyball coach talks success, leadership style as 2014 season approaches
A decade of leading the Central Michigan University volleyball team has taught head coach Erik Olson many things.
Perhaps no lesson was more important than that of servant leadership while heading into the 2014 campaign. Olson said he is happy to refer to himself as a player’s coach.
“In this team I see super hard workers and super competitive kids,” Olson said. “More so than in the last five years. These women want to win.”
Olson has helped the Chippewas find a collective frame of mind as the Aug. 29 season opener at Nebraska approaches: Look ahead instead of backward.
“We talk about this. We don’t want to look in our rear-view mirror. We want to look through the windshield,” Olson said. “That’s a much bigger window and it tells us where we are headed. If you look in the rear-view for too long, you get in an accident.”
CMU finished the season 11-17 overall and 5-11 in the in Mid-American Conference last year. CMU missed an opportunity to compete in the 2013 MAC Tournament when they lost to Ohio in straight sets last November.
The Chippewas coach said he and the rest of his staff have always placed high value on self-evaluation.
“We evaluate ourselves everyday,” he said. “Everyday after practice, we ask our players to evaluate us, too. Sometimes we lose sight of what we are trying to do as coaches.”
Olson described his own self-evaluation process as intellectual, collaborating heavily with the team through regular discussion.
“I’m a thinker,” Olson explained. “With the team, I’m pretty close to them. I would consider myself a player’s coach for sure.”
As Olson spent the last 10 years thinking, he has done so with what he called the most important thing in mind.
“Team,” Olson said. “To be a great coach. You’ve got to take the ‘me’ out of the equation completely. I would hope that our team be the same way. That’s our goal.”
Achieving the goals he has put in place for the program serves as Olson’s biggest reward for the countless hours both he and his players have dedicated to the revitalization of CMU’s volleyball culture.
“We’ve got one player that stays after practice and does another half an hour of wind sprints,” Olson said. “That’s after seven hours of volleyball during camp. I told her: ‘You’re nuts. I’m working you hard enough.’ That’s the mentality. They want to be great. All of them.”
As he enters his eleventh season at the helm of a program on the rise, Olson uses how far has come as the inspiration to strive for the success he believes the 2014 team can achieve.
“I can’t wait to see how this group is going to evolve,” Olson said. “We’ve come a long way, but we want to do more. This team is hungry.
“If we touch the ball, it is amazing what we can do.”
