Even following the most momentous of victories, the thoughts of
UCLA women’s volleyball coach Andy Banachowski were a
mystery. Everyone else in Pauley Pavilion recognized the
win’s significance. Volleyball players jumped into the air,
celebrating the upset over No. 2 Washington in front of a restless
home crowd of over 800 people. They wrapped their arms around one
another, showing the excitement their coach held back. They had
toppled a national powerhouse. Meanwhile, their seasoned, old coach
slowly emerged from his seat. He gave a brief display of emotion,
with a slight fist pump that quickly disappeared. Upon observing
Banachowski’s reaction, it would be impossible to tell he had
just won his 1,000th game as the UCLA women’s volleyball
coach. Two of his players snuck up behind him, trying to douse him
with a bucket of Gatorade ““ the symbolic moment of
achievement. But Banachowski side-stepped his players, and the
Gatorade quickly fell to the floor. He then walked into the locker
room the same way he had done 999 other times after a Bruin win.
His reaction was fitting, considering Banachowski’s tenure in
Westwood has been defined by his cool demeanor and uncanny modesty.
The man has downplayed every one of his accomplishments. In his 39
years with the Bruin volleyball team, he has accrued six national
titles, the most by any coach in women’s volleyball history.
He’s only the second Division I volleyball coach to amass
1,000 wins. His career record is 1,000-263, winning almost 80
percent of his games. In 1997, Banachowski became the first
women’s volleyball coach inducted into the National
Volleyball Hall of Fame. He is clearly a giant in the volleyball
realm. But don’t tell him that. He doesn’t admire his
own success ““ he would rather just put everything in
perspective. “There is such an adrenaline rush involved in
the competition all the time,” Banachowski said. “There
are highs and lows in the season, but the competing part continues
to make volleyball my passion. When the season is over, I always
feel depressed because I want to feel the rush of competing again,
so I start working for the next season. So part of coaching for so
long is that you have to be an adrenaline junkie.” Funny as
it may seem, Banachowski wasn’t always so addicted to the
game. As he explains it, he’s a man who casually fell into
coaching immortality. He got involved in volleyball as a college
student and the hobby grew to a passion. Now it is the only thing
he can imagine himself doing. Banachowski’s path to 1,000
wins is not well-known, mostly because he is a quiet man who shies
away from the spotlight. But his story is worth the telling.
Student years Coming to UCLA in 1963 from San
Mateo, Banachowski had no specific goals for his future.
Banachowski chose to come to UCLA because he had an older brother
here at the time and decided to follow in his footsteps. He came to
college thinking he might become a doctor, but his first chemistry
class extinguished that desire. Academics played only a minor roll
in his college life. “My major was English, but academics
were not at all a big part of my college experience,”
Banachowski said. “I don’t think I came to college to
get an education. I came to go to college. That’s just what
you did back then. You graduate from high school and go to college.
I knew I had to find something that I wanted to do with my life,
but never knew what it was going to be as I continued … getting
my education.” Once he got here, Banachowski joined his
brother in the fraternity scene, forging his identity mainly as a
member of Delta Tau Delta. It was through the fraternity that
Banachowski was first introduced to competitive volleyball.
“Being in the fraternity and playing in the backyard and in
intramural leagues was where I first developed a passion for
volleyball,” Banachowski said.
His playing days Banachowski soon desired more
than just backyard games with his fraternity. As his interest in
volleyball developed into an intense passion over the course of the
year, Banachowski decided he wanted to be on the UCLA volleyball
team. In his second year, Banachowski tried out and barely made the
team. “I was one of the bottom guys on the team, but I was
happy as I could be just to say that I was a member of the UCLA
men’s volleyball team,” Banachowski said. Even though
he lacked any formal volleyball training, his passion for the game
and his work ethic impressed his coach, Al Scates, who was the
first Division I collegiate men’s or women’s volleyball
coach to reach 1,000 career victories. “He just was the
epitome of a hard-working guy,” Scates said. “He
didn’t have any volleyball experience, but in those days,
that wasn’t uncommon. We got athletes and taught them how to
play volleyball, and that’s what we did with Andy.” In
his first season on the team, Banachowski rarely got any playing
time because the roster was already loaded with talent, and he was
still learning the game. The Bruins went on to win their first
national title under Scates while Banachowski didn’t even
make the championship trip. As he kept playing, Banachowski
steadily improved and became an All-American by 1967, his third
year on the team. That season, the Bruins won their second national
title under Scates, and this time Banachowski was an integral part
of the team as the starting setter. “Being a part of the
championship team was really a major accomplishment,”
Banachowski said. “Even back then, UCLA had a great
reputation for winning championships, so it was very rewarding to
be a big part of it all.” By the end of his playing career at
UCLA, Banachowski had gone from a seldom-used bench player to one
of the country’s best. “He didn’t have any
weaknesses as a player,” Scates said. “He could do
everything well. We used a different type of offense then, and the
setter had to pass, set, and hit. He was good at all those things.
The setter was actually the key position, and I had all my best
players play setter. If that position was solid, we were going to
be good.” Despite his talent, Banachowski was seen but rarely
heard. Rather than being an outspoken team leader, he employed a
quite demeanor and let his playing do the talking.
Banachowski’s modest personality would also come to define
his later success in Westwood.
Starting the women’s program When
Banachowski was still a junior, he decided to coach the newly
formed women’s volleyball team. After only playing volleyball
for one year, Banachowski became the coach of a sport that he was
still learning himself. Banachowski thought that coaching might
improve his own game, which was his main focus. “I thought
that if I was a coach, I would be forced to learn more about the
game, and I was a guy who just wanted to play volleyball and learn
as much as I could,” Banachowski said. “I thought that
if I improved my knowledge of the game, then as a result I would be
a better player.” Taking on the role of coach, however, was
actually little more than assuming new responsibilities in the job
that Banachowski already had. At the time, Banachowski was working
for the intramural sports office as a referee and lifeguard, among
other jobs. Within the intramural office there was an extramural
sports office which was beginning to start competitive
women’s programs, one of which was volleyball. Since he was a
part of the men’s team and was already employed by the
intramural sports office, Banachowski was asked to coach the
women’s team. “I was working my way through college
with lots of jobs, and coaching was one of them,” Banachowski
said. During his early years of coaching, Banachowski was so driven
to win that he let each loss eat him up. “I can remember
waking up in the middle of the night after losses and having this
sick feeling in my stomach and breaking out in a sweat, realizing
that we just lost the game again,” Banachowski said.
“And I’ve learned to temper my competitive attitude,
but it’s still a pretty driving thing for me.” With
little background in volleyball and none in coaching, Banachowski
was quickly forced to learn how to teach the sport to others.
Just a side job After graduating in 1968,
Banachowski quit his job coaching the women’s volleyball team
and went back to San Mateo, thinking he would get a job, although
he had no idea what it might be. After searching for a few weeks,
Banachowski realized that he didn’t want to be anywhere other
than UCLA and returned to work part-time at the Sunset Canyon
Recreation Center, teaching volleyball on the grass courts. Later
that summer, he became one of the assistant intramural directors
and worked in that capacity for the next two years. From 1968-1970,
Banachowski did not coach the women’s volleyball team because
of the time conflict with his intramural job. Those two years are
the only time in the history of UCLA women’s volleyball
during which Banachowski has not been the coach. In 1971,
Banachowski became the assistant director of the Sunset Recreation
Center. With the new job, he was able to have the time to coach the
women. But even then, it was just something he did on the side
since there was no full-time women’s coach. “I never
thought that coaching would be something I would do for the rest of
my life,” Banachowski said. “I was coaching at first
because I loved the game and wanted to learn more, and then as time
went on and I graduated and really didn’t have a competitive
outlet for myself, I think I realized that by continuing to coach I
could be competitive. I love that aspect of competition, and
that’s what drew me back to staying involved with
coaching.” As he began coaching again and won his first
national championship in 1972 with the women’s team,
Banachowski still didn’t feel like it would be his career.
Instead, he continued doing it because it was the only way he had
to compete. As he got more involved in coaching, Banachowski began
to influence the athletes in profound ways. One particular athlete
he impacted early on was Nina Matthies, who went on to be
Banachowski’s assistant coach for seven years after playing
at UCLA in the early 1970s. Matthies then became the coach at
Pepperdine, where she has been for the last 23 years.
“I’ve known Andy since I was 15 years old, so he was a
big part of my life growing up, and he’s gone from being a
coach to a friend,” Matthies said. “I was very fiery
and emotional when I was younger, and I learned from him to have a
more calm demeanor in matches and not let things get carried away
one way or the other.” “I saw how he cruised through
the ups and downs of the program, and he gave me pieces of how I
wanted to be a coach,” she added. By the middle of the 1970s,
Banachowski had already established himself as one of the top
coaches in the country, winning national titles in 1972, 1974 and
1975. But even with his success and the impact of Title IX in 1972,
which gave resources and scholarships to women’s teams,
Banachowski was still unable to fully devote his attention to the
game he loved. He continued on with his main job as the director of
the recreation center until 1981.
As an assistant coach As his passion for
volleyball and competitive nature grew, Banachowski decided to
become more involved and took on the job of assistant coach for
men’s volleyball in 1972. As Scates’ assistant,
Banachowski trained approximately 10 players on the second court,
teaching them the basics of the game and preparing them to move up
to the first court when other players graduated. “He was very
good at preparing the younger players on the second court for the
first court,” Scates said. “Volleyball was so very
simple in those days. So if you just had good fundamentals and good
players, you’d win. We were always fundamentally sound, and
Andy was a big reason for that.” As assistant coach from
1972-1977, Banachowski was able to find another outlet for his
competitive nature. And with his help, the Bruins won four NCAA
championships. Although UCLA did not lose often during
Banachowski’s tenure as assistant coach, he still made sure
that the team regretted each defeat.
Coaching full time It was only after
Banachowski had been coaching for 15 years that he decided that
working with women’s volleyball was what he wanted to do for
the rest of his life. The decision came as a result of UCLA’s
move in 1981 to have women’s athletics join the NCAA
governing body and leave the Association of Intercollegiate
Athletics for Women. For the first time, full-time women’s
coaching positions were established, and Banachowski resigned from
his position at the Sunset Recreation Center. “Until 1981,
coaching was only my avocation, not my paying job,”
Banachowski said. “I was basically doing it for free on
release time from my other duties. I was very happy to make the
transition from recreation director to full-time coach.”
Given the opportunity to get paid solely as a coach, Banachowski
jumped at it, knowing that volleyball was where his passion truly
was. “In my early stages of coaching, I never really thought
about always being a volleyball coach,” Banachowski said.
“It was just something I really enjoyed and had such a
passion to do. Going to work at the rec center was a great job, but
it was just a job. It wasn’t the thing that drove me at all.
Coaching was the passionate thing for me.” In an attempt to
make coaching volleyball a more respected career, Banachowski and
Terry Liskevych founded the American Volleyball Coaches Association
in 1981. Today, almost every volleyball coach at any level is a
part of the organization. “Back in the ’70s, people
never saw coaching women’s volleyball as a profession, so
Terry and I founded the AVCA to professionalize the image of
coaching women in volleyball,” Banachowski said. “The
establishment of the coaches’ association made coaching look
good and allowed for a future, and I began to think coaching could
be the job for the rest of my life.” By the time UCLA joined
the NCAA, Banachowski had built the women’s volleyball team
into a perennial national powerhouse. The team advanced to the
Final Four every year from 1971-1981, winning three times. It was
at this point that UCLA became the obvious choice for many of the
top recruits in the nation. “Andy was the main reason I chose
to come to UCLA,” said two-time All-American and Olympic
volleyball player Liz Masakayan, who played at UCLA from 1982-1985.
“He had a proven track record to win and it was expected that
we would be able to get to the Final Four every year, and we had
the confidence and talent to always compete for a national
championship.” In addition to coaching the women’s team
and being an integral member of the AVCA, Banachowski found time to
be the adviser to the U.S. National Team and two Olympic teams.
Recent success Some of the greatest success
Banachowski and the women’s volleyball program at UCLA have
had were in the late 1980s and early 1990s: winning consecutive
NCAA titles in 1990 and 1991. During this time, Banachowski has
continued to influence his players while approaching his success
with the utmost humility. His quiet persona often earned him the
trust and respect from all of his players over the years.
“Andy is the best volleyball coach I have ever had, and he is
great at teaching techniques and throwing in the flair also,”
said Natalie Williams, who played from 1989-1992. Under
Banachowski’s instruction, she was a four-time All-American
and was named Pac-10 Athlete of the Decade. “He was a great
teacher. Andy taught me that you can work hard and have fun at the
same time. More than anything, volleyball taught me discipline. It
is a game of least errors, and Andy has taught his girls over the
years how to master that,” she said. Indeed, Banachowski has
been able to form lasting relationships off the court. His players
still swear by the life lessons he taught them decades ago.
“The number one thing he’s taught me is
patience,” said assistant coach Kim Jagd, who has been a UCLA
assistant for 13 years. “I want us to be good the first day
we start practice, and he has this more mature vision where he can
see the team getting better over the course of the season.”
Even after coaching for 39 years, Banachowski is just as
competitive as he was in his early days. His passion for the game
of volleyball has defined his career and his life, and he has been
able to influence countless other athletes and coaches.
“Volleyball is a big part of who I’ve become, and I
can’t imagine doing anything else but coaching,”
Banachowski said. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve
come to appreciate the fact that I can impact people’s lives
more, and I love to see former players making their mark.”
“I just want to impart to the players the passion I have for
the game, and see them compete. That is what is most rewarding for
me.”