“You have to find a place that you really believe in.”
In this episode of the 35,000 Feet podcast, we talk to Chuck Rey, the head coach of women’s volleyball at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. In our talk with Chuck, he shares with us the highs and the lows of the 2019 season with the team and gives us a good look into what is coming next for him, as a coach, and the Winthrop volleyball team!
In this episode, we discuss:
How this past season went for Winthrop volleyball (0:30)
How Coach Chuck got into coaching (3:25)
Chuck’s favorite travel experiences (8:17)
One thing that no one knows about Chuck (11:58)
Chuck’s advice to athletes wanting to play in college (13:17)
Chuck’s next adventure (14:10)
The Highs and Lows of Winthrop’s 2019 Volleyball Season
Coach Chuck Rey: Yeah, you know we got pretty lucky, I'll tell you that. So every once in a while the ball bounces in your way and we had a pretty good season. But, you know, the one interesting thing about this last year, and the year before we had a good season, my first year as a Head Coach, but as you go along and you have this undefeated streak, each match, at least for the Head Coach, and hopefully not for the rest of the team, but I actually had more anxiety as the season went on, even though we were as successful as we were. And I think that anxiety came because, you know, we wanted to keep this streak and wanted to do so well.
And I just had great respect and learned to have great respect for some of these football coaches on the collegiate level, and basketball coaches, where literally on the football side you have to be undefeated every year to win a national championship. I can't imagine that pressure, they must feel every year of every game that they have to be perfect and to be perfect is not our goal. We just want to strive and achieve for excellence. And it's actually a distraction in some weird ways.
Even at the last school I was at we had, I think it was 27 straight sets, that we won. It was nine plus matches and it was a strained streak and a great streak that we had to, and we lost a set, and we still ended up winning the match, but it was almost as if we lost the match.
And so, just really kind of psychologically how these things play with you and you don't want it to affect you. Our men's basketball team right now, they're on a 13 game winning streak for them and their conference, and Coach Kelsey here is great about not talking about it and we try not to talk about it too. So, sometimes you get lucky and it goes your way.
How Chuck Rey Became A Volleyball Coach
Coach Chuck Rey: You know, kind of a crazy, strange journey, in a good way. I grew up in Chicago and I got to play on the first boys high school volleyball teams in the Chicago land area. A great opportunity. And from there I went to Arizona State and I played some ball out there. And then really I spent 10 years after college in the real world.
I had an international marketing business. I got to travel the world and mostly over to Asia importing product here in the United States for consumer consumption here. And the business was going well, but when I reached my early thirties I wasn't really happy, and my passion, and I always continued to play volleyball on the side in a lot of different tournaments. And I was playing on the beach one day and somebody was there like, "Hey, why don't you come help up my junior club team?" And I said, "What is that?"
And so I got involved and I really started to fall back in love and the bug, you know, it never really leaves you with this. And I started coaching at a high school, local high school there, and one of my buddies was coaching, an assistant coach at Georgia Southern University and he said, "Hey, I'm leaving. You want my assistant coach position?"
So, I started there, and then the head coach left after one semester I was there, I was without a job. So, then I ended up going up to the University of Minnesota as a volunteer coach, and then I came down here to Winthrop after that for four years and had a great experience here, and then went to Miami to go help Ohio for five years. And so now they liked me so much I guess that they brought me back to Winthrop and it's been a fun little journey here.
Shianne: Wow. I love hearing how you got to be a coach cause it's so unconventional how you kind of took that break for 10 years, you know? And then you didn't even know probably that you wanted to coach volleyball and then all these opportunities kind of came up, right?
Coach Chuck Rey: Right. And, you know, I always had a passion for this game and the sport and just love for it. And, like I said, even when I was working the real world, as I'm traveling overseas, and I remember one time in Hong Kong, I'd find an open gym where there's some volleyball and got to play with a bunch of Chinese players there. And I'm like, "This is really what I love." I love being in the gym under the crazy fluorescent lights, and I get these bad tans from the fluorescent lights. You know, it just doesn't leave your body. So, it was pretty cool.
Coach Chuck Rey’s Favorite Travel Experiences
Coach Chuck Rey: I've had some pretty unique perspectives in that way in terms of when you travel individually and you get the opportunity to take advantage of the side journeys and little things you can do versus traveling as a team, and it's completely different. You travel as a team, you're just a big group, and how you kind of mix the two, but you do learn some of the insights and ins and outs of travel when you are able to do things on your own first and then bring them to a team.
I think what also helps make us successful now are the little things that we take advantage of. Knowing how to travel a little more comfortable or a little bit better, in terms of how do you take advantage of some of these breakfasts, and we're not a big-budget school, and where are some of the better breakfast places that might be for free, or inexpensive. Or instead of taking a charter bus to someplace, how do you take public transportation, which is an amazing experience for student-athletes, but to incorporate that into what you do now.
And so travel has been a big part of what we do here.
Shianne: Yeah. What are some of the places that you've gone either with your team or, I know you'd mentioned you'd been to Hong Kong with business, what are some places you've been?
Coach Chuck Rey: Well, I have been fortunate to travel both Europe and, and Asia. I mean Hong Kong, I say Hong Kong is like 10 New York's all put together. It's crazy. And their subway system is amazing and they have the elevator system in the central part of Hong Kong there that you basically go up a mountain on elevators, and they've got the amazing trolley that goes up the steep side of the hill over on one of the islands there.
But also even pleasure wise, my wife and I, we got to journey to Italy for our honeymoon, and through that journey, we had an amazing experience in a small town called Sienna, Italy. And that whole trip and the whole journey there just kind of resonated with us so much that we've even named our daughter after this town of Sienna, Italy. So her name is Sienna.
Travel has been a big influence to our family, and I can tell you even for our program. My first time here at Winthrop as an assisting coach, I can tell you how I messed up our travel. I thought I was going to get fired the first travel weekend I was out where we actually went to the incorrect hotel than we were supposed to go to, and we stayed a night at it, and paid an extra room, and it was just some cross-communication way back in the day when these called fax machines, where the faxes got mixed up and all of a sudden my Head Coach realized we're at the wrong hotel, and oh my, the pit of my stomach got in there.
And just you learn to deal with people and how you relate with the people in the travel world and they understand how these things can happen and how accommodating they actually were after something like that. But it's how you treated these people.
Shianne: That's a really cool little story you shared that's like you kind of messed up, but travel is really accommodating. For the most part, people like to help each other out and I like that. Have you guys had the opportunity to travel overseas ever with your volleyball team?
Coach Chuck Rey: With Winthrop, we have traveled internationally, we haven't recently. With the last school I was at we did get a chance to go over to Germany, and we went to Prague in the Czech Republic, and we did go to Krakow. It was an amazing international journey where in Germany we get to learn quite a bit about the Berlin Wall and just opened that experience up to our young ladies that were on the trip.
From there we got to play in Poland, and we purposely wanted to play in Poland because we had a young lady, first-generation from Poland here in the US, and she was able to play in front of her grandparents who never did volleyball. So, you know, for her to have the experience to play back in her homeland and her parents' homeland was awesome.
We got to visit Auschwitz while we were on that tour, and I have some past history, my family does, with Poland, and my grandparents actually met in a work concentration camp, on my mom's side of the family, and they were really removed from their homes when they were 16 and never had a chance again to see their family, and they moved over to New York after the war. And so, I got a chance to go into Auschwitz and be there in probably a place they may have stepped foot on in some terrible times.
One Thing No One Knows About Coach Chuck Rey
Coach Chuck Rey: You know, quite honestly, it's not something that I hide, and I'm a Christian now, but my upbringing was not so much that way, and people now who really know me, kind of see me and know me as a Christian man, but my path and my journey to get to where I was, I come from a family where divorce is a big part of my family, from my dad and my mom, my dad, and my stepmom, and even myself personally, and even the student-athletes here, I don't open up or not that transparent about that portion of my life. Not because it's not something that I am worried, or scared or regret, it's just something that usually doesn't come up. So, if they listen to this portion of the podcast here, you'll certainly get some insight on me.
But the strength that you have and the resiliency you have and what you learned through these journeys in life, and the Lord has been amazing to me in that way and blessed me in those ways to find him and be able to be a lot stronger now in these days.
Coach Chuck Rey’s Advice to Athletes Wanting to Play in College
Coach Chuck Rey: We have here, it's about relationships, but really you have to find a place that you really believe in. You have to find a place, in my opinion, that will really encourage you. But ultimately you've got to find a place that you love and it's the love that you have for the university, where you want to be, the area of the country you want to be as best as you can, and you've got to be able to follow your dream at that place. I really think it comes to the people that you get surrounded by. If you're surrounded by good people, I think you can fall in love and be encouraged and really believe in what you're doing.
What’s Next for Coach Chuck Rey and the Winthrop Volleyball Team
Shianne: What are you most excited about for the upcoming season? I know you guys probably have a little bit of a target on your back.
Coach Chuck Rey: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think we do being here at Winthrop anyways, and we've always felt that way. We have a great facility, great support, great academics, and get great young ladies to come to this school. And so, we always feel as if we have this target on our back. And it's really just the challenge of the process now of how do we use the positive things that happened for us last year, but yet to kind of find a new identity for us, and also kind of put the past behind us too.
It's funny, even in our sport, when we make one simple error on the court, we often tell a player, "Hey, forget about that error, move on to the next one." Well, also in a positive way, "Hey, we need to forget about last year in some ways and move on to the next one."
And so I think the biggest challenge for us is being able to move on and not just kind of lay back on our laurels and to be hungry again and to want to achieve. And I think that's where the most excitement for me comes from is formulating this team again and putting them back together so they can be champions.
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Podcast made in partnership with Acanela Expeditions
Theme Song - I’ll Just Be Me by Gravity Castle