Eve Rackham, the head coach of women’s volleyball at the University of Tennessee sits down with us in this episode of the 35,000 Feet podcast and gives us insight into her journey as a volleyball coach. During our interview, Eve tells us about how she started coaching at the age of 22, some of her favorite travel experiences including a foreign tour to Italy, and what’s next for her team!

In this episode, we discuss:

• How this past season went for the team (0:19)

• How Coach Rackham got into coaching (6:20)

• Eve’s favorite travel experience (10:40)

• One thing that no one knows about Eve (14:15)

• Eve’s advice to athletes wanting to play in college (15:58)

• Eve’s next adventure (17:39)

Overview of the 2019 University of Tennessee Women’s Volleyball Season

Coach Eve Rackham: So 2019 season was definitely ... had some ups and downs. It was our second year as a coaching staff with the program and coming off a really successful 2018 season, I think expectations were really high for a group that didn't have quite as much experience as the year before. So we had some really good moments. We actually started the year losing to Illinois in five, both matches. We played them at home opening night. We have a record crowd and we lost 23-21 and the fifth. It was a tough one. And then we went up to Champagne on the Sunday and played them there and we were down 0-2 and came back and lost in five and that one. So it was kind of almost the way the whole season went. We were really close in a lot of matches and couldn't find a way to finish it enough to accomplish a lot of the goals that we wanted to have. So we finished 15 to 13 overall, nine and nine in the SQC. Disappointing on a lot of levels. But our team grew a lot, we beat Texas A&M, which was a probably a high for this group.

It was a really good match and we lost four or five matches in five, which can kind of turn your season around. So I think, we felt like we were all in all seven or eight points away from a postseason, which is just the way it goes in our sport. You get into those fifth sets and got to find a way to win them. So we had a number of players who were asked to have big roles that hadn't had big roles before.

And so that jump for them, that learning curve I felt like towards the end of the year we were playing our best volleyball, they were starting to get it. We just ran out of time a bit. I felt like this group got better all year long and just couldn't put enough together to make a run at that very end.

Shianne: And those are the tough losses when you get to that fifth set, 21-23 those are the hard losses because you're just right there, not quite. So that's hard for sure.

Coach Eve Rackham: It took me a while to watch that Illinois match back. It was a tough one to follow. I think we had, I don't know, six or seven match points and a swing to win, a serve to win, a dig to win. It was tough. So it's a hard one to watch back, but a lot of lessons learned for sure.

How Coach Eve Rackham Got Into Volleyball

Shianne: How did you get into volleyball?

Coach Eve Rackham: Oh man. Well I was a kid who did a lot of sports. I was a gymnast, I was ... I swam, I played basketball and I was in fifth grade and there was a middle school team that our ... one of the teachers was putting together with fifth and sixth graders and so they had tryouts and I made the team never having played volleyball, but I was fairly tall. I mean by those ... back in the day 5’ 10” was really tall, so when I started playing in fifth grade I don't know, I was probably 5’ 6” or something.

But I was one of the taller kids, stronger kids. I played a lot of sports. I was pretty coordinated, made the fifth and sixth-grade team and I really just fell in love with the sport. And I had no idea about club volleyball. My stepfather actually was a high school teacher and asked one of the PE teachers at his high school, do you know of any other place my stepdaughter can play volleyball? She's really fallen in love with it. And he introduced him or he gave him, Chris Lamb, who's actually now the head coach at Wichita State.

But he gave him his number and said, you should give this guy a call. I think he does something called club volleyball. And so my stepfather called him and he said, we just started the season and we only have ... our youngest age group is fourteens. But if you want to have come and we can look at her or whatever. I was 11 at the time and so they brought me on and let me stay on the team. I was 11 years old playing on a fourteens team and just really ... I loved it.

I started playing really young and kept playing basketball until basically, I was about a sophomore in high school, but for the most part, volleyball became the dominant sport in my life and really started playing really young and then it went from there.

How Eve Became Coach Rackham

Shianne: Did you always know you wanted to coach volleyball or how did you get into coaching?

Coach Eve Rackham: It's funny, so many people have asked me that and I always feel like I should have a different answer, but I did. I always knew I wanted to coach and if I didn't coach I thought, I probably would teach, but I just, for me, I always was either a captain or a leader. I was always the vocal person. It was kind of like coaching just became, just came really naturally almost maybe too naturally for my 12-year-old.

I was always kind of in charge of what was going on. And I think that it just was like I ... when I looked into my future, I thought I would love to do this forever, as long as I could play, as long as I can be associated with the sport I want to be in. It just, coaching was something that I just, I was really passionate about and I wanted to do from a really young age. And then when I got into it, I really, I still enjoyed it, which was, I guess I was lucky in that way and that's what I wanted to do and I enjoyed it.

Because I didn't really have another plan. If it was, I got into my 20s I was like if I don't coach, then what? It was kind of like the only thing I had my eyes set on. So, but I always knew that I wanted to, or at least as long as I can remember I've wanted to coach.

Shianne: Can you kind of tell us about how you got into coaching and your journey to becoming the head volleyball coach at Tennessee?

Coach Eve Rackham: So I graduated college in 2000, oh gosh, 2003 and I thought, I'm going to go play professional volleyball. I thought that's what I was going to do. I was going to go to Europe and do that. And so I went overseas and I thought when I was over there, maybe I don't want to do this, I'm not really sure. And I came back from kind of the tour that we were on and in the meantime looked up some vacant assistant coaching jobs and started to apply while I was waiting to see if I was going to get picked up by a team in Europe.

And ended up getting an interview at Colgate university for their assistant job. And so I went on my interview and I came back and I got offered the job and I accepted it because I hadn't heard anything from the agents over in Europe to see how I was going to make a team or but anyway, I accepted the job and I got a phone call or I think maybe an email about a week later saying, hey, we've got a job for you in Germany to play if you want to play.

And that was a hard decision because I felt like I had already committed to taking the job at Colgate and I didn't want to go back on my word and say, actually, now I'm going to go play. So I kind of gave up the dream of playing volleyball as long as possible because I knew I wanted to coach and I had this opportunity to start. So, that was my first head coaching job. I ... oh, no, not head coaching. Assistant coaching job but I was 22 years old and moved to upstate New York and did a season there and kind of quickly realized that it was really way too cold for me in upstate New York. So I think it snowed almost all seven months that I was there.

And so it was brutal. So I moved from there. I went to East Carolina and I was an assistant coach there for three years. And then from East Carolina, I went to Florida International, which is in Miami. I was there for a year and then I got a call to go back to my Alma mater, which is the University of North Carolina. And I coached there, I went back there in 2009 and I coached there up until the 2017 season and then took the head coaching job at the University of Tennessee in January 2018 and that's where I am now.

And it's been, I think I counted recently as 17 years of coaching that I've done now, which is ... it's just kind of mind-boggling. I don't feel like I'm that old, but now I count the years and I go, I guess I have to call this a long time.

Coach Eve Rackham’s Favorite Travel Memories + University of Tennesse Volleyball Foreign Trip to Italy

Shianne: You mentioned that you played overseas and stuff. Can you maybe tell us about some of your favorite travel experiences, whether it was playing or if you got to go anywhere as a coach? Can you kind of tell some about some of your favorite ones?

Coach Eve Rackham: I love to travel. I love to plan travel. I love to be traveling. I love everything really associated with travel. So being in this profession, we're so fortunate because we get so many opportunities to travel to places that maybe we wouldn't otherwise go, whether it's a conference school or a non-conference opponent. I've had an opportunity now to go to Europe three times on international tours with, two with North Carolina and one this past summer with Tennessee. I love Paris. I think I love ... I haven't been anywhere in Italy that I don't like.

And I've been able to do that with this. With Tennessee, we were in Italy this past summer along with the South of France. My husband played professional volleyball in the South of France for a couple of years. So it was really to be able to go back to Cannes during the film festival and see that. And we stayed in the East for a couple of nights and just unbelievable scenery, food, people, the culture, just so cool to be able to take your team overseas and have them experience not only the volleyball, but just everything European and every ... and the way that they do things there. Just, what a neat experience for some of our players who have never been out of the region, much less the country.

And then, gosh, just domestically I've been to almost every state, not quite every single one, but I've been to a lot. I grew up in California, in Northern California, so I'm kind of a West coaster at heart, but I've fallen in love with the South because I've been here since basically 1999 when I left for school. So I've been kind of coast to coast and I love ... I loved living in Miami when I was down there. I loved growing up in the West Coast, I grew up in Sonoma County, which I didn't even know was a destination for people until I moved away.

I didn't even know it was a big deal that people come from all over the world to travel to Sonoma County. But yes, I'm a big traveler. I love it. And I really ... there aren't too many places I've been that I didn't like.

A Unique Thing about Coach Eve Rackham

Shianne: That's awesome. What is one thing that no one knows about you that you can share with us?

Coach Eve Rackham: Gosh, that's a tough one too. Well, not many people know, I ran a marathon in 2008 and a funny thing to me about doing that was that I hate to run.

Shianne: I do too. I'm like, congrats that you did the marathon because I couldn't do that.

Coach Eve Rackham: And anybody who knows me is like, oh no, Eve hates to run. And my boss at the time, she said, I'm going to train for a marathon. You should do it too. And I thought, one of those like, I don't know if I can say no to this. She's my boss. And so her and her friend and I, all three of us were training for this marathon. I was miserable. And we got to about two weeks out from the marathon and the friend of hers got a knee injury, so she dropped out. So she wasn't going to be able to run and about, I don't know, three or four days before the marathon, my boss's sister had a baby so she didn't end up running.

So then I ran the marathon alone after six or seven months of training. So that's one thing that I always if people ask me like what's ... it's something just about you but I always refer to that because it was a unique situation for sure. Not only did I run it, but I ran it by myself and it was awful, to be honest. It was awful.

Coach Eve Rackham’s Advice for Athletes Wanting to Play in College

Coach Eve Rackham: I think a lot of people would probably say you want to pick a school that you would go to even if you couldn't play volleyball because God forbid something happens and the opportunity to play volleyball isn't there anymore, I think everybody would want to be at a place where they could see themselves academically, socially, just culturally could do they sit in there, do they feel like this is the best fit for them outside of volleyball?

So I think that that's probably number one when players are looking at a school to go to, where do they feel like if they just, absolutely, if volleyball was off the table they'd be ... they'd still be happy. That would probably be my first piece of advice. And then my second piece of advice would be to talk to people who have either played there or know the coaches on a personal level or have gone to school there. I think that there's a lot of times that people make decisions about where to go to school and they don't have enough information or true information.

But I always think, whether it's talking to former players or talking to students who have been to that school about what they liked about it, what were the challenges about it? People who've played for that coaching staff there. Those are really important questions and if you can find people to give you really answers, I think that makes decisions much easier.

What’s Next for Coach Eve Rackham and the University of Tennessee Volleyball Team

Shianne: What's your next adventure? What are you most excited about for this upcoming season?

Coach Eve Rackham: Oh, well, I'm excited every year. Every year brings a new group, a new set of challenges, new team dynamics. I'm just excited for this group we have in the gym right now. We've got 14 players currently in the gym and we've got two freshmen who will join us this summer and then working on a transfer as well. So I think that we ... our team's going to look really different in the fall than it did a year ago.

That's always just exciting to see how the new pieces fit together. I really like the personalities we have in the gym right now. I like the mindset of the players we have and it's, for us, we're going into year three. So we are still continuing to build a culture. We're continuing to build the program. There's a lot of things that we are still working to implement, just from a culture or a systematic standpoint.

We are still working on making changes to this program overall. So it's just, it's been fun. It's been an awesome life-changing experience to take over a program like this and to work with, not only my husband but our other assistant who I've been with for 10 years, almost 11 years we've worked together. It's so much like a family. I just feel so fortunate every day we go to work. So, I think that for us it's just, it's an ongoing evolution of a project. It's just fun to kind of see what the next month is going to bring, what the next year is going to bring.

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Podcast made in partnership with Acanela Expeditions

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