When hired as Brockport's head women's volleyball coach in 2013, Steve Pike's goal was to be a top-four SUNYAC team within four years, and to make the NCAA tournament within five. Three years later, he's already exceeded those expectations.
Surprising even himself, Pike won his first SUNYAC Championship in 2015 with Brockport, the program's first in over 20 years. The team proceeded to the second round of the NCAA Tournament before finally falling to Springfield.
The journey to his first championship, though, spanned almost two decades. Pike spent 15 years coaching at Potsdam in relative mediocrity, at least to outside observers. The location of Potsdam's campus in northern New York was a constant challenge, one that he's ultimately grateful for.
In retrospect, Pike's time in Potsdam was a blessing. If volleyball players weren't interested in coming to see Potsdam, he had to go see them. He became proactive in connecting with players. As he says, "... we all have a desire to feel connected. If you feel that you're competent, and you feel like you're related, or connected, I think you're going to play pretty hard ... that can impact motivation as much as any speech or video."
We're grateful to have Pike describe how the previous 18 years led to his first SUNYAC Championship.
Ryan Maloney: You've been chasing this goal for a very long time.
Steve Pike: Yeah (laughs).
RM: What was it like when you finally won SUNYAC's?
Pike: Wow, what was it actually like... a lot of joy, a little bit of relief, a little bit of "holy cow, this is pretty cool." I was about to run out and jump on the team but I thought wait, I can't do that, so I turned around and had a group hug with the coaching staff. That was a pretty cool moment to share.
RM: What I'm most interested in is what you learned in your first 15 years at Potsdam before you came to Brockport. You must have learned so much that allowed you to transition and do well at Brockport right away.
Pike: So much can be learned in adversity if you allow it. I was blessed with a couple seasons where we won five or seven matches at most, and man, you can learn a lot from those kinds of years. There were some significant challenges while I was coaching there and I had to figure out how to work within what opportunities there were. One thing I figured out was that students didn't want to come to Potsdam because of it's location and distance. The students who were willing to come, or at least visit, had some sort of connection with me previously, so I had to get to know them somehow, whether you coached them at a camp, or somewhere else. I figured out that me just being on campus wasn't going to get it done, I had to be out coaching kids somewhere else. If they weren't going to come, I had to go to them.
RM: You had to put in a lot of hours over those years. How did you push through all that adversity?
Pike: I was just trying to get better, and help the program get better every day. I figured out at some point that if I got better, then every kid on my roster got better. If I'm just in the gym working with one kid, only that kid gets better. So I tried to spend as much time as I could on my own growth. Something else I learned from Billy Donovan (Oklahoma City Thunder) was that you're not going to win championships with administrative work. You have to do your administrative work and your procedural work, but that's not going to help you win. Don't let that time creep into what can help you win, and that's time spent on the court, time spent recruiting.
RM: From talking to you and talking to people about you, you do seem to have more of a passion for coaching than most.
Pike: Yeah, I love it. I love learning every day. I love that it's challenging to figure out how we can get better at teaching people, and getting them to understand how they can improve and figuring out the best words to use to convey it. I love that part of coaching. Ten years ago, I wish I had those poor student-athletes back, because man, I would do some things differently now. And I hope in ten years I can say the same thing. There's probably something I'm doing right now that's not as good as it could be, and what is that and how do I figure that out?RM: I was talking to a club coach you work with and he told me that you spend more time on serving than he'd ever have the patience for. Is there anything specifically that you do that may be different than other coaches?
Pike: I don't know what everyone else does, I just know that every play starts with a serve. So I think we have to teach it. There's two sides to it: I think we have to teach the tactical side of where to serve based on the other team's rotations and who they're trying to set and where their setter is coming from. I think we leave that to chance a lot. Then I think there's also the technical side of serving. We break that skill down a lot so we can serve tough and in a lot, because the more you can do that, the more stress you put on your opponent. I coach serving a lot, versus just letting kids enter balls from the endline, maybe that's where I'm a little different.
RM: Is there anything besides serving?
Pike: Any drill we do in practice I ask, "How can I make this as game-like as possible?" I'm always asking our players, too. At one practice this season, we were working on hitting out of system balls with our outsides, trying to make it as game-like as possible. I thought it was pretty good and I walked over to one of our players and asked, "Hey is this how it happens in a game for you?" She said that it actually wasn't, that usually the ball comes from a different angle. So we changed the drill to make it more realistic to the game.
RM: Just listening to you talk, you speak with a lot of humility. As much as you know and as long as you've been around, you're still communicating with your players about what's going on in their minds. Can you talk about your own communication style?
Pike: I realized a long time ago that I was communicating a lot without really saying anything, and it wasn't good. Even when I thought I was being calm verbally, I wasn't non-verbally. I had bad non-verbal communication, and my athletes would pick up on it. As athletes, the more you can communicate with them the better they'll get and the faster they'll improve. Plus they're going to feel connected, and we all have a desire to feel connected.
RM: Connected to you?
Pike: Connected to the coaches, connected to everyone. If you feel that you're competent, and you feel like you're related, or connected, I think you're going to play pretty hard, even in practice. I think that can impact motivation as much as any speech or video.
RM: Have you had many struggles with communication?
Pike: I struggle with it every day. I had an athlete who was struggling during the season and I couldn't figure out why. This went on for a long time. It wasn't until after the season that she told me that the way I was communicating with her was actually hurting her performance. I had no idea. It turns out that she was scared of my reaction every time she went to make a certain play. So I need to find out from the players, is the way I'm communicating with them helping or not?
RM: Knowing that there are going to be these issues that pop up, do you take preventative measures to understand your athletes' communication styles?
Pike: Yeah, we work with a tool called the DISC behavior assessment to try to figure out everyone's communication styles. It helps us understand: I may need to use stories when I'm talking to Jane, but be very direct with Sarah over here. Yeah, we do that on the front end during preseason.
RM: Say a high school coach doesn't have the resources for a DISC assessment, is there anything formal that you'd recommend they do?
Pike: You can find out all about the DISC online and look at the research behind it. I imagine that if you research it enough you can start to figure out what generally helps your players perform, and you learn about yourself that way. As a coach you learn about your communication styles and your behavior styles. And that's another thing, our players get to learn about us as coaches. They understand that we have some communication style that we prefer. The information is out there.
RM: When you spend time on personal growth, what exactly are you doing?
Pike: One thing I'm working on this year is developing a growth plan for me. One aspect is to always be reading books that are from outside the sport. Right now I'm reading on from John Maxwell, who has been in leadership development for a while. I also like to figure out how I can get in someone else's gym a lot.
RM: You mean physically go to another coach's gym during a practice?
Pike: Yeah, I want to spend time listening to other coaches, figuring out ways to do things better. And I try to get to a coaching seminar on a regular basis. When I worked for Gold Medal Squared I got to go to their coaching clinic for free, and I got to be in different high school gyms around the country. It's the same thing working with USA High Performance, it was a cost-effective way to coach different kids and be in the gym with former Olympians. It was a great experience.RM: Do you have any book recommendations? Maybe if you had to pick two or three?
Pike: Maxwell has definitely had an influence on me. Coach K's Leading with the Heart is written in a really practical way for coaches to use. The other person I read quite a bit is Jeff Janssen. Some of his books are manuals that you can go through with your athletes. I'd recommend those to every high school or club coach, specifically The Team Captain's Leadership Manual. It's helped me have some good conversations with my athletes about leadership. I don't necessarily believe in captains but I believe in leaders
RM: What does that mean? That you don't believe in captains?
Pike: We haven't had captains at Brockport since the first year I got here. I think there's some real benefits to it. I understand why a lot of teams do have captains, but there're drawbacks. When you say this person's a captain, then it tends to be that that person has to take leadership and do a lot of stuff. We like to have the team lead, and have each person lead in their area. I think things can be done better in circles than in tiers, especially on the female side.
RM: I like that a lot, but some coaches would some to you and say, "Steve, if we don't have captains, how do we know who's accountable for what?" How do you still create that accountability in a circle?
Pike: I used to say that players have to hold each other accountable, but I disagree with my old self. I'm pretty convinced now that that doesn't work so well, especially with 18-22 year-olds that are still developing. It's the coach's job to hold athletes accountable, we need to teach them how to lead themselves. They hold each other accountable less because we tend to judge others' behaviors, but we judge ourselves on our intentions. So I know my intentions are good even though I made a mistake, but I judge you on your behavior and I think that can lead to a lot of team dysfunction. I've gotten away from players holding each other accountable to the coaches having to do that. The players need to be able to communicate but I don't preach to them that they have to hold each other accountable.
RM: I just read a book called No-How Coaching from a football coach and he said the same thing, that all his upperclassmen are his leaders, there are no captains per se. You seem to be saying that it's everybody for you though.
Pike: Yeah, I think he's right in a lot of ways. Your upperclassmen have been around longer so they tend to automatically take some of it. But sometimes you have a sophomore who can lead well, so you have to give her that opportunity. We had a sophomore lead us with her work ethic last year, and a freshman lead us with her personal growth. It was awesome to see.
RM: We touched briefly on recruiting earlier, but I wanted to ask about it more because you seem to really enjoy the recruiting process.
Pike: I do.
RM: A lot of coaches don't because it's a lot of pressure. But your recruiting approach seems to be centered on building relationships through your coaching. Has that been the most effective approach for you?
Pike: I think it has been, because I think the other ways are flawed, or don't work as well. I only know Division III, so I can't speak to other worlds. We can't offer them athletic money, so I have to spend a lot of time and get to know them and figure out if we can help them, and if they can help us. I think that way works pretty well.
RM: As you're out there over the last three years, is there a vision you're communicating to recruits? A story about the future?
Pike: For sure. Our mission was to be the best program we could be and to have anyone who saw us would want to be a part of it. If we can do that in every area, I think success will follow. On an outcome basis, our goal was to be in the top four in the SUNYAC within four years. Reworking the vision it became our goal to get to the NCAA tournament within five years. We were able to achieve that a little bit faster than we thought.
RM: Is there anything else that you'd want other coaches to know? Maybe something you wish you'd known when you were younger?
Pike: Great question. One of them would be that initial ability and final ability are not directly connected. So that kid who's not very good right now in your gym, you don't really know how good she'll be.
RM: Even in college?
Pike: Even in college. Having spent this many years of seeing how much kids can either improve or regress, it's become an important for me to keep that in mind. The other thing I wish I'd known is the fact that the kind of feedback we give our athletes, and the way we give it, can be different whether we think that athlete will be successful or not. So Suzy, who is our star, makes an error and we talk to her one way, and then Jane, who is maybe last on our roster, makes the same error and we talk to her differently, or we don't even talk to her. We may not even spend much time on her in practice at all, and that leads to the expectation in her mind that she's not very good.
RM: And coaches may not even be aware they're doing that.
Pike: Yeah, early on I wasn't aware of it. I don't even think I understood that it existed, and it's had a huge impact on me. The last thing would be to say, "sorry." I used to think that saying "I'm sorry," or that I'm wrong, would be giving up authority. This year I said, "I'm sorry," so many times. The players see that you're human, and it helps your connectedness.