About Famous Volleyball Coaches

Types

• Teams focus on beach (outdoor) volleyball or the indoor form of the sport, from college level to professional to Olympic caliber. One famous collegiate coach is Laurie Corbelli, who has the most wins in the history of the Texas A&M women's volleyball program. With Corbelli as head coach and her husband, Tom, as associate head coach, they became one of the most highly respected coaching teams in the collegiate sports world. Corbelli, a 1984 Olympic silver medalist, was hired by Texas A&M to coach Aggies volleyball in 1993. The Corbellis' teams reached the NCAA tournament 13 times in 14 years.

Geography

• Superb programs can be found all around the world, and sometimes a player from one program eventually becomes a coach in a different country. Lang Ping, a talented player in China in the 1980s, won numerous world championships with her team. As head coach of the 1996 Chinese women's Olympic team, Lang Ping was a driving force in China's winning the silver medal in Atlanta that year. She then successfully coached league matches in Italy, where her team won the championship cup for five years running. In 2005, she became head coach of the American women's volleyball team. Ironically, as a player she helped beat the United States in the 1984 Olympics and achieve a gold medal for China; then, as a coach in 2008, she helped her American team beat China in the preliminaries. The American women's team went on to win the silver, losing the gold to Brazil, while China won the bronze.

  Lang Ping had the notable achievement in 2008 of being the only female head coach in the world-ranking top 20 countries by the Federation Internationale de Volleyball.

History

• Volleyball was invented by Massachusetts YMCA coach William Morgan in 1895, inspired by the German sport of faustball and other net games such as badminton and tennis. Living in a climate with cold winters, Morgan wanted to create a net sport that could be played indoors. By the early 1900s, the game was being played on beaches in Hawaii and California as a leisure activity, and the first organized trophy tournaments were played in California in 1930. Beach volleyball was first played at the tournament level in Europe in 1927 near Paris, France. In 1950, the first world championship was organized in the U.S. and in Brazil.

  Beach volleyball was officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee in 1996, and was included for the first time that year.

  Kerri Pottharst of Australia, a renowned beach volleyball player, won a bronze medal in 1996 and a gold medal in 2000 at Sydney. She went on to coach several international teams.

Significance

• An outstanding coach can make all the difference in a team's success. The Brazilian men's volleyball team only achieved sixth place in the 2000 Olympics but in 2001, Bernardo Rezende was hired as head coach. Rezende had represented Brazil as a player in several international competitions before turning to training and coaching in 1988. After he began coaching the Brazilian men's team, it won the Olympics in 2004, the world championship in 2002 and 2006, and World League titles in six years between 2001 and 2007. The Brazilian men won a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, with the U.S. winning the gold.

Expert Insight

• Great coaches can make great motivational speakers, because they know what it takes to build success. As Bernardo Rezende said, "We have to do our best. We owe that to ourselves. We have to refocus and think about what we are going to do tomorrow."

  And Laurie Corbelli said: "I think you go for proving everybody wrong. I've always felt that when people say you can't, or you won't, you show them you can."