In this interview we got to talk to Mike Gawlik, the head coach of women’s volleyball at Central Michigan University located in Mount Pleasant, Michigan and learn about his experiences. Episode 16 of the 35,000 Feet podcast includes time where Mike tells about how he became a volleyball coach, the travel experiences he has had with the team and also in his personal life, and shares some top advice for athletes who are looking to play in college!

In this episode, we discuss:

• The highs and lows of this past season for Central Michigan (0:20)

• How Mike became a volleyball coach (1:48)

• Mike’s most memorable travel experience (5:36)

• One thing no one knows about Mike (10:35)

• Mike’s advice for athletes who want to play in college (14:05)

• Mike’s next adventure (18:32)

2019 Central Michigan Volleyball Season Recap

Mike: Well, the good news is we had a pretty good fall, so it was a lot more highs than lows. So we had returned quite a few people from the year before and took our lumps the year before. So in 2018, we went seven and 21, not a great season. Started with a lot of young players, four freshmen, two sophomores and a lot of times played like we started four freshmen and two sophomores, just a little bit inconsistent and some big moments. But our team worked really hard in the off-season, came back this fall and we were able to flip the script a little bit. Went 21 and 7 or 21 and 8, something like that. Won a lot of close matches and really played with a lot of experience, composure, poise I think in some big moments. So we were able to win our side of the conference. Our conference is split into two divisions, but we have to win the West division for the first time or second time in program history, which was really neat.

Culminated with an opportunity to go to the National Invitational Tournament, the NITC for postseason play. Really only the second time we had participated in postseason play since '82 which is when I was born. So it's been a long time coming. So been really proud of where we've come from and still have a long way to go, but really proud of the fall that we had.

How Mike Gawlik Became a Volleyball Coach

Shianne: How did you become a volleyball coach?

Mike: Oh, a volleyball coach. Well, I grew up playing volleyball. I'm from Illinois originally and volleyball's a sponsored sport for boys at both the club level and the high school level. So I just had the opportunity to play. Ended up getting an opportunity to get out and play in California. Played at a Division I school out in California, a school called the University of the Pacific and stopped in California and played four years Division I volleyball there and just fell in love with the sport or was in love with the sport to the point that I had a little bit of a career change or career path change where I was preparing to go to med school out of college and just thought my life without volleyball would be pretty empty. So I ended up wanting to get into the sport.

I felt like my skillset probably translated more to the women's style of game than it did to the men's. So got into coaching on the women's side and volunteered my first year in 2005 with Michigan State and head coach then Kathy George. I had looked at two different places to go be a volunteer. One of the places was coming out of the national championship match and the other one was at the bottom of a really deep conference. In talking with both coaches who I respect a lot, one of them, Kathy George at Michigan State said, "If you're going to get into this profession and you're more likely to take over a program that needs a lot of help than take over a program that's already at the top." That always resonated with me. I thought if I want to figure out what college coaching is, I got to get my hands dirty and try to help a program get back on the right track.

So I was with Michigan State for one season or what I thought would be one season. There was a coaching change on her staff for a full-time assistant and she ended up hiring me full-time. I ended up staying there for 10 years as a volunteer to an assistant coach to an associate head coach and then the opportunity came up in Mount Pleasant about 60 miles North of Michigan State to take over as the head volleyball coach in 2016. So I'm really fortunate for my path and I haven't bounced around a whole lot, but I'm really fortunate that my path has brought me here and I'm excited to be here. This is year four so we've grown a lot, that's for sure.

Coach Mike’s Favorite Travel Experiences with Central Michigan and in His Personal Life

Mike: I think from volleyball and my career path, I think we've had an opportunity to go to some really neat places. I had an opportunity while I was with Michigan State to go to Hawaii and play out at Hawaii. Big, wonderful volleyball culture out there. As a player, I've been through Provo, Utah, kind of playing at BYU with their elite men's program. I love the way that they play volleyball and the way that they embrace volleyball on both the men's and women's side. And obviously it's beautiful in Provo. You know that.

I think that just all points of the country I think are neat. I think some of the campuses are really exciting. We had the opportunity to take our Central Michigan team to Army West Point for that kind of experience where they got to see how the cadets of West Point are not only playing volleyball at an elite level but also training for things far beyond what we're doing and what they're doing at the collegiate level and preparing to be officers within the US Army was just a once in a lifetime experience.

But every campus we go to is just so unique and whether it's traveling in the Big 10 or whether it's traveling in the MAC,  you get to see these cool and neat little college towns all over the place. And going in your conference, you kind of go to the same schools over and over, but when you kind of get outside your conference and you're going to some campuses that maybe you've never been to even through 15 years of coaching, I think it's always neat to see some of those little niches. The recruiting world takes you to some big cities as well. My wife and I like to travel. We like to travel internationally. We try to travel in May every year and we've gone to some really neat places.

We save up a lot of money every year to have an opportunity to travel but going to Ireland and Scotland for one year. We've been to Thailand. We've been to South Africa, which is probably one of my favorites. Greece and Egypt, been to the pyramids in Giza, Egypt and went to Japan. Where else did we go? Honduras and Belize and working our way through with a buddy of mine, we're going to Norway this May, so we're excited about that.

Kind of planning out that trip and a lot of hiking and a lot of just experiencing different cultures. I think that whenever you can get outside your comfort zone you're learning, something that I tried to instill in our players on a daily basis in our gym, but certainly, it would be something that I would apply to my own life as well. When you get outside of your little bubble and you see the way people do things all over the world, I think it just gives you some really neat and interesting perspective. So yeah, it's a passion of mine for sure.

Coach Mike’s Advice to Athletes Wanting to Play in College

Mike: I think it's more about, at least for me, and this is my evolution as a coach, I think it's more about who you are than what your stats are. I feel like as a recruiter, I feel like I'm out watching as much in between plays and in between matches is I am during matches. I think there are some players that are great between the whistles and they jump high and they hit hard, but they're not making eye contact during huddles or they're not giving back to their teammates, so they're eye-rolling when something didn't go their way. It's the way they treat their parents between matches or the way that they shake an official's hand after a tough match. I think all of those things come into play and I think that I feel like maybe too many athletes are thinking it's about their highlight reel.

I think more coaches more and more are looking for not only the highlight reel, we need good players, but we need good people too because these are the people that if you can kill a volleyball you'll help us out 25 or 30 nights a year when we have game day, but if you're miserable the other 335 days a year, then that's not something I want to surround myself with. But if we can work together and try to really push towards something and you're working hard in your practice gym, in the weight room and constantly have your focus on how can I be better and how can I be coachable, then we're going to coexist really well. I feel like you can find both of those things, the hardworking player that's also really elite and gifted, but you have to be willing to kind of look for the warning signs.

I think maybe too many young athletes don't take that into consideration. They think it's all about their stat line. That's part of the equation but I'm not going to take a bad teammate, or if a coach is saying that they're not coachable, they're not going to be a real good fit with us. They might be a perfect fit with somebody else, but as we protect our culture at all costs, and we've gone from a team that's been at the bottom of our league to flirting with the top, that's one of the things that we just haven't compromised as a staff in the recruiting process. If we're on a visit and a recruit gives us some red flags about the way they're treating mom and dad while they're on the visit or they're ungrateful or they never say thank you or they feel entitled, well then, we're going to pass and I wish them the best of luck somewhere else.

We're going to surround ourselves with really good people. I think really good people come from really good people, so it's as much about recruiting the families too. So I don't know that enough youth players in any sport recognize that or at least some coaches, and I'm speaking for myself, that they value all of those things and certainly the academic component and how disciplined are you in all aspects of your life, not just your sport. So I wish more athletes knew that.

The Next Adventure for Central Michigan Volleyball and Coach Mike Gawlik

Mike: Well, a couple of things. I feel like I talked with you, my wife and I like to travel and our bucket list and I feel like I tell people sometimes we're always aggressively tackling our bucket list. We don't want to wait for some magical day to start doing that. We now have a daughter. I have a two-year-old daughter and this will be the last year she's not going with us, but we plan on taking her with us when she's three-and-a-half and a little bit older. But other things we want to do, we want to go down to South America, go down into Peru and probably Machu Picchu and the Amazon. I want to go gorilla trekking in Uganda, but that's probably far away. Certainly Australia. I just want to get all over the world.

See it, experience it. I'm not really close-minded to anything. I have a wonderful wife that actually kind of doubles as our travel agent. She loves planning vacations and so she doesn't tell me much, which is cool. I know we're going to Norway, but I don't really know what our daily itinerary is. When we go on vacation it's kind of like everyday it's like a surprise. We'll literally driving someplace and she'll be like, "Okay, here's what we're going to see." And I'm like, "Oh, that sounds fun." And then we'll be there.

Shianne: Cool. And then for your team, what would you say is your upcoming adventure for your season coming up? I know you guys are still in spring ball, but August will come around pretty fast.

Mike: Yeah, it'll be pretty quick, but it's always amazing how quick the fall gets on you. I think our team right now has a really kind of challenge in front of us in that we went from being relatively unknown in our league. We were picked to finish fourth or fifth on our side and ended up winning our side. So we kind of came out of nowhere, and I think that our team right now is having to deal with that. We're not going to be a surprise anymore. We're not going to go into the pre-conference with that same kind of chip on our shoulder where it’s prove the world wrong. I feel like it's we're going to go in with a little bit of an expectation and how do we handle that and how do we embrace and reframe that to be not necessarily pressure, but this is what we came here to do. We came here to be in a position where we are amongst some of the favorites in the league or that we are and how do we live up to that?

I think that's the challenge for us right now. Every day we prepare in our spring ball and in our spring competition and then in the summer and then in our preseason, we have to get ready for that. It's challenging. It's easier said than done in any sport to kind of keep that up focus 365 days a year. I feel like that's the challenge that we're working with right now. But I think it's one of those things that's worth doing and I feel like they need a reminder. We all need a reminder sometimes, but hopefully, that's our next adventure is now kind of pushing through. We kind of butted up to I think beyond expectations for a year ago, but how do we raise our expectations for a year from now? So I think our athletes are working incredibly hard.

I feel like they have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder because we left the conference championship out there in some ways or it was within reach and we didn't play our best match down at the end of the stretch. But playing with expectations is now that next thing that we've got to work with. But that's good. You want expectations. I feel like that's the reframing that we need to do is say we worked really hard to get these expectations and not shy away from them. So I tell them all the time, if there's no expectations, you're not very good. Or if every time you win it's a surprise to somebody, then they didn't think very highly of you from the beginning. So having expectations and playing with those expectations is, is not necessarily a burden, but it's something that we've worked hard to get and now we've got to push through and set that even higher for the following year. So that's hopefully our next adventure.

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