Brittany Dildine, the assistant coach of women’s volleyball at the University of Wisconsin located in Madison, Wisconsin is the subject of this episode of the 35,000 Feet podcast. In our interview, we dive into how she became an assistant coach and what she is learning, her most memorable travel experience traveling abroad with the team, as well as her advice to young players looking to play at a collegiate level!

In this episode, we discuss:

• What lessons brought Brittany to coaching in Wisconsin (0:31)

• How sports at UW are different and special (4:57)

• The most memorable travel experience with the team (13:36)

• Brittany’s advice for athlete’s who want to play collegiately (16:17)

• What is your next adventure? (23:58)

How Coach Brittany Became a Volleyball Coach at the University of Wisconsin

Gracee: How did you end up in Wisconsin? What brought you there?

Coach Brittany: It's really not a super awesome, inspiring story of how I got to the University of Wisconsin. When I got into the coaching profession, it was at the University of Dayton in 2009, and it was for a man with the name of Kelly Sheffield. And currently, he is the head coach here at Wisconsin.

And when I jumped on board with him at Dayton, I was a first-time coach. I had played volleyball and basketball at Purdue University. And I'm from Lafayette, Indiana, and his background is also from Indiana. And so the time that I was being recruited, he was a college coach at the University of Albany, but also had the Indiana backgrounds. So there was a lot of familiarities I think that he had with me. And so when I decided that I wanted to be a college coach, he made a call, and two Purdue coaches, who are currently there now, who I was volunteering under, and urged me to interview.

And I did that. And I bombed the interview, but he took a chance on me. So we've been working together ever since 2009. And when he took the job at the University of Wisconsin, he's kind of a, "We all go together" fellow. And it's nothing really magical. And even I thought, "Okay, Kelly, we're going to The Big Ten, what are we going to do that's different? What are we going to do? We're going to turn this program around. What's, what's the trick?" And he looks at me like I'm crazy, kind of. His eyebrows kind of bend in the middle and crease, in the middle of your nose. And it's like, "We do exactly what we do. We just do it there." And I thought, how relevant is that to people that sometimes want to out-think a room or make things more complicated than what they are. What we had established at the University of Dayton was a winning culture, a really strong one.

And a winning culture, no matter where it is, it's still considered a winning culture. There's not anything magical behind that, and I thought that was a really profound way of looking at our transition to Wisconsin. So how I got here... we took a team of people that we knew worked really well together and we took over a program that needed just a little bit of a different look and our staff succumbed to the national finals in 2013 and our first year here. So the rest was history.

University of Wisconsin Women's Volleyball Foreign Tour to Europe

Gracee: What was your guys' most memorable travel experience with the team? Either being a foreign tour or just going to a faraway game?

Coach Brittany: Well, I mean, we went to Europe and can't even remember what month it was. I think it might've been at the end of May, beginning of June.

Gracee: Of this year?

Coach Brittany: Yes, it was going into this season.

Coach Brittany: And every college, D1 college program, it's permissible for them to take an international trip once every four years.

This was the first one that we had ever been on as a staff and even as a first program that we've taken over there. And I feel, in more ways than just volleyball, that was the most exciting thing. Because what, at least from my position and from where the coaches stand, to be able to sit back and hear the banter or the conversation from one player to the next and hearing them say phrases like, "I just had no idea the world was this beautiful." Or, I just had no idea that Lake Bled was this incredible, peaceful destination and the families that have their livelihood here in that culture, or the appreciation for the Vatican that they got to visit, or the Trevi Fountain, or even if it's just a small town in Maribor and they're seeing their eyes wide open and all of that to me, was probably the coolest thing.

If you want one story from that, my goodness, I don't even know how to choose. I think anytime that you can open anybody that keeps the space that you share, that you have shared space with, with other humans and in interacting and anytime that you can be around them when they're having an epiphany or even just something that is so enlightening. I was just happy to be there to observe that with them.

Gracee: Yeah, that's incredible. I definitely can see the potential of traveling with the team, just creating that bond. And then also as you said, growing individually and just being able to see the world through a different perspective, is totally something that I'm so happy that the schools get to do the foreign tours because-

Coach Brittany: Exactly.

Coach Brittany’s Advice to Young Players Who Want to Play for a Top 30 Team

Gracee: It's just a great real-life experience and it also helps the teams on the court as well. So that's awesome. So if an athlete wanted to play for a team collegiately, what would your advice be?

Coach Brittany: Well, that's super broad. Let's just speak from the only place that I know how to speak from. I can't particularly speak for anything less than Division One, Top 30.

It's what I know. It's what I've been a part of as a coach and a player. And so I think the biggest thing to understand, and I'm going to go back to the phrase that, The University of Wisconsin is just not for everyone. And you can take that in a way that is perceived of a more general way of speaking, would be finding the right fit for you as an athlete and as a person is what is most important, regardless of what other people might think. I think one of the common phrases being used as a piece of advice for young women or just athletes in general when they're going through the college decision making processes is, "choose a school that if the sport wasn't there, you'd still be happy."

And I think that is, if you haven't been in the shoes of a student-athlete, it's almost a little reckless. You can't, at this level, with the things that everyone is trying to accomplish. You wake up in a dorm with potentially a teammate. So you live with that teammate and then you're going to go to class. And then what you're going to do is you're going to go to a practice and you're going to practice for coaches. And those coaches are going to have a message for you every day. They're going to say something every day to you because that's what coaching is. And how that coach communicates and what that coach asks of you, does that fall in line with what your goals are? Because we can only coach you according to what your goals are.

If you come here and you commit to The University of Wisconsin and you sit there and say, "Hey, I want to be on the Olympic team. I want to do that. I want to be an All-American."

And we're going to coach you like an All-American and we're going to coach you like those are your goals. If you want to be coached differently, then we need to talk about having different goals. But you are always the one in charge of those goals.

It's you, when you have that open dialogue. And so I would say the same thing in the recruiting process. "What are your goals?" And without judgment of any of those goals. Every single athlete that I talked to and I say, "Hey, what's most important to you?" All of them say "I want a good education." Okay, you're going to get a good education. You're going to get it.

So unless you're sitting there saying, "I want to be the best medical professional," if there's a certain major, then do that. But I feel like there's a lot of teenagers that are just saying, "I need to, I have to say that because that's what I've been coached to say." Well of course education is going to be important to you. You wouldn't be interested in college if education wasn't going to be important. At what level is it important to you? Do you just want a degree from The University of Wisconsin? Do you want a specific degree at The University of Wisconsin? Is it, "Hey, I have to be in school because I want to play volleyball."? And you know, we've got some girls that have great GPAs but would prefer to play volleyball full time.

The Next Adventure for Wisconsin’s Volleyball Team

Gracee: Last question for you today, Brittany, is what's your guys' next adventure for you? Either personally and for the team?

Coach Brittany: We're just trying to get better every day. I mean, if you take care of today, you take care of the things that you can control right now. That's the time that you put into the people around you, people you care about. The time you put into your own self-improvement, whether that be mental health, physical health, education, that's of some capacity or the deliberate practice that you put in the gym. And if you take care of those things today, I don't really necessarily think the rest is going to take care of itself.

You know, it's no secret that we want to bring the University of Wisconsin a national championship in volleyball. That's not a secret. That's always out there. That chase will always be there. Whether we win one, two, three... it will always be what we're going after. And what we're talking about is not winning a championship because that's just there, that's hanging out there. But it's what have you done every day that is championship behavior to give you the best shot at getting that championship. And right now in the phase that we're in right now, we're just practicing the championship behavior, though our team right now is only allowed to be with coaches two hours a week. That's it. That's it.

We have players in the gym. As they have reported to us, because there are questions coming back about, "Hey, I tried this, can we understand the philosophy of certain passing technique" or whatever. And they're coming up here with that dialogue because they want to be in the gym, they want to do it right and it's deliberate practice. It's not just the hours. How many hours can you do it well?

They are completely in control of their own fates and their own goals. And when you have an environment that is so player-driven, that's the best kind of environment to be in because what you're doing is one, you're empowering them to be an active participant in their own glories, in their own rescues and everything. They're active participants in their own journey. And instead of us just sitting there and telling them what to do all the time, you just give them those tools and they'll take that with them forever.

Follow University of Wisconsin Volleyball

• Wisconsin Volleyball

• Brittany Dildine Twitter

Podcast made in partnership with Acanela Expeditions

Theme Song - I’ll Just Be Me by Gravity Castle